


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

■■■■■■I 

000124b'1573 




1: %.^" ^'^m: \</ »^^l "W^ 





















4 o 

.^...^, •.^_^^^o .^^^.„ ^^^^< . 










rCII O'NEILL, ^^' V^^ij4l// 



\ Ji 



LlAl^L OF T\TO3X 



THE 

LIFE AND TIMES 

OP 

AODH (TXEILL, 

PBINCE OF ulster; 

CALLED BY THE ENGLISH, 

HUGH, EARL OF TYKONE, 



SOME ACCOUNT OF HIS PBEDECESSOES, 

CON, SHANE AND TIRLOUGH. 



BY JOHN MITCIIEL, 



•*Ctt tii4TT) cnoinic -DO clom MejlL" 

"Come let us make a clironicle for the O'Neills." 



j^" 



NEW YORK: 

P. M. H AVERTS, 1 BARCLAY STREET, 

(Third Door from Broadway.) 

1868. 



V/ASH 



\^^ 



TO THE MEMORY 

MY DEAR FRIEND, 

THOMAS DAVIS, 

WITH DEEP REVERENCE 
I INSCRIBE 

O-HIS BOOK. 

JOHN MITCHEL. 

Banbtidgt, Sept. 23, I8d5. 



PREFACE. 



Perhafs in no country, but only Ireland, would 
a plain narrative of wars and revolutions that are 
past and gone two centuries and a half ago, run 
any risk of being construed as an attempt to 
foster enmity between the descendants of two 
races that fought so long since for mastery in the 
land. 

Yet the writer of this short record of the life 
of the greatest Irish chieftain, is warned that 
8uch construction may, and by some assuredly 
will, be put upon the following story and the 
writer's manner of telling it. But as to the nar- 
rative itself, undoubtedly the only question ought 
to be — is it true ? And if so — is the truth to be 
told, or hidden ? — Is it not at all times, in all 
places, above all things, desirable to hear the 
truth instead of a lie? And for the way in 
which it is told — the writer does indeed ac- 
knowledge a strong sympathy with the primitive 
Irish race, proud and vehement, tender and 



VI PREFACE. 

jK)etical ; with their deep religion and boundless 
wealth of sweetest song, and high old names, and 
the golden glories of Tradition ; retiring slowly, 
and not without a nol»lo Soiuggle, before what is 
called " Civilization," and the instiuriive and un- 
relenting insolence of English dominion ; mostly 
victors in the field, but always overcome by 
policy ; plucking down the robber standard of 
England in many a stricken battle — but on the 
whole, by iron destiny, and that combination of 
force and fraud and treachery, which has ever 
characterized the onward march of English 
power — borne back, disunited, and finally almost 
swept from the earth, to make way for the greedy 
Adventurers of all Great Britain. And if the 
word " Saxon" or " Englishman" is sometimes 
used with bitterness, it is because the writer, 
carrying himself two hundred and fifty years 
Irxkward, and viewing events, not as from the 
Council-chamber of Dublin Castle, but from the 
Irish forests and the Irish hearths, is sometimes 
tern pied to use the language that fitted the time, 
and might have lain in the mouth of a clansman 
of Tyr-eoghain. 

But the struggle is over, and can never, upon 
that quarrel, be renewed. Those Milesian Irish, 
as a distinct nation, (why not admit it ?) wero 
beaten — were finally subdued ; as the Fir-boigs 



PREFACE. Vn 

were before them ; as the ancient Kymry were 
in Britain, and afterwards their conquerors the 
Saxons. A new immigration was made, early 
in the sixteenth century, like that of the Tuatha- 
de-Danaan and Milesians of remoter times. Once 
more new blood was infused into old Ireland ; 
the very undertakers that planted Ulster grew 
racy of the soil ; and their children's children 
became, thank God I not only Irish, but united 
Irish — became " liighty-two" Volunteers — anti- 
Union patriots — in every struggle of Irish na- 
tionhood against English domination (to which 
the now impending on® shall not be an exception) 
were found in the foremost ranks, "more Irish 
than the Irish." The armies of Elizabeth, the 
planters and undertakers of James, may have 
been marauding adventurers, or even robbers : 
let it be granted that they were — so were the 
Franks who founded Charlemagne's empire ; so 
were the vagabonds and fugitive slaves who 
flocked into the " asylum" of Romulus — and 
afterwards, off-scouring of mankind as they were, 
begat a progeny that bore the Roman Eagle over 
nations' necks, from Indus to the Pillars of Her- 
cules. Whatever god or demon may have led 
the first of them to these shores, the Anglo- Irish 
and Scottish Ulstermen have now far too old a 
title to be questioned : .^hey were a hardy race, * 



Viii PREFACE. 

and fouglit stoutly for the pleasant valleys they 
dwell in. And are not Derry and Enniskillen 
Jreland^Sf as well as Benburb and the Yellow 
Ford ? — and have not those men and their fathers 
lived, and loved, and worshipped God, and died 
there ? — are not their green graves heaped up 
there — more generations of them than they have 
genealogical skill to count ? — a deep enough root 
those planters have struck into the soil of Ulster, 
and it would now be ill striving to unplant 
them. 

The writer of these pages boasts to be of that 
blood himself: no Milesian drop flows in his 
veins ; and therefore he may be the more easily 
believed in disclaiming the base intention to ex- 
asperate Celtic Irish against Saxon Irish, or 
to revive ancient feuds between the several races 
that now occupy Irish soil, and are known to all 
the world besides, as Irishmen. 

The truth is, that the object of this Life of 
Hugh O'Neill is simply to present as life-like a 
sketch as the writer's ability and information en- 
able him to give, of an important era of Irish 
history, and the deeds of that illustrious chief- 
tain who was the leading spirit of the time ; who 
was the first, for many a century, to conceive, 
and almost to realize the grand thought of 
crexjfing a new Irish Nation : and who for so 



VREFACE. iX 

many bloody years, bulwarked bis native Ulster 
against the numerous armies and veteran gene- 
rals of the greatest English monarch. And, fur- 
ther than this, if any reader shall see a striking 
similarity in the dealings of England towards 
Ireland then, and now — towards Ireland Milesian 
and Strongbownian, and a later Irish nation con- 
sisting of Milesians, Strongbownians, Scottish 
planters, and Cromwellian adventurers ; — and if 
such reader shall recognize the policy recom- 
mended by Bacon, directed by Cecil, and prac- 
tised by Mountjoy and Carew, in the proceedings 
of certain later statesmen of England ; and if 
(which is not impossible) he shall arrive at the 
conclusion, that the bitterest, deadliest foe of Ire- 
land (however peopled) is the foul fiend of Eng- 
lish imperialism ; and, further, if he shall draw 
from this whole story the inevitable moral, that 
at any time it only needed Irishmen of all bloods 
to stand together- — to be even nearly united — in 
order to exorcise that fiend for ever, and drive 
him irrevocably into the Ked Sea ; — surely it will 
be no fault of the present writer. 

In the days of Hugh O'Neill, the religious 
element had begun to mingle, with terrible efifect, 
in Irish affairs. And as " the businese of a re- 
ligious reformation in Ireland," to use the words 
of Dr. Leland, " was nothing more than the im- 



X PREFACE. 

position of English government on a people not 
sufficiently obedient to that government — not suf- 
ficiently impressed with fear or reconciled by 
kindness,"* it is impossible for an Irishman, 
writing of that period, and sympathizing with 
the outraged and plundered people, to describe 
that most singular transaction with any soft or 
conciliatory phrases. Imagine how a native of 
Ireland must then have regarded the " Reformed" 
church. To him it was simply the church of the 
stranger — it was an ally of the enemy : — the spi- 
ritual supremacy and the temporal sovereignty of 
a foreign king, were to him altogether indistin- 
guishable, and alike detestable : the one seemed 
but a scheme of plunder for military adventurers, 
the other for ecclesiastical. Apart from all consi- 
derations of doctrinal truth (with which, as being 
wholly irrelevant, the writer of these pages does 
not meddle) it was enough for the Irish people to 
know that foreign usurpation and foreign religion 
were striding over their country, hand in hand, 
and planting their footsteps together deep in 
blood and tears ; — deposing their chiefs, perse- 
cuting their bards, supplanting their ancient 
laws, and also prostrating their illustrious and 

• Hist, of Ireland, vol. II. p. 201. He is speaking of 
the religious changes made in the reign of Edward the 
Sixth. 



PREFACE. Xi 

hospitable monasteries, dishonouring the relics of 
their saints, and hunting their venerated clergy 
like wolves. 

But this, also, is all past and over. The very 
penal laws, last relics of that bloody business, 
are with the days before the flood. And, though 
it be true, that the mode of planting this Esta- 
blished Church of Ireland '.—first, enthroning a 
whole hierarchy of bishops and archbishops, and 
then importing clergy for the bishops and pa- 
rishioners for the clergy — was of all recorded 
apostolic missions the most preposterous — though 
the rapacity of those missionaries was too ex- 
orbitant, and their methods of conversion too 
sanguinary ; yet, now, amongst the national in- 
stitutions, amongst the existing forces, that make 
up what we call an Irish nation, the church, so 
far as it is a spiritual teacher, must positively be 
reckoned. Its altars, for generations, have been 
served by a devoted body of clergy ; its sanctua- 
ries thronged by our countrymen ; its prelates, 
the successors of those very queen^s bishops, have 
been amongst the most learned and pious orna- 
ments of the Christian church. Their stories 
are twined with our history ; their dust is Irish 
earth ; and their memories are Ireland's for ever. 
In the little church of Dromore, hard by the 
murmuring Lagan, lie buried the bonea of Jo- 



XU PREFACE. 

remy Taylor; would Ireland be richer without 
that grave ? In any gallery of illustrious Irish- 
men, Ussher and Swift shall not be forgotten ; 
Derry and Cloyne will not soon let the name of 
Berkely die ; and the lonely tower of Clough 
Oughter is hardly more interesting to an Irish- 
man as the place where Owen Eoe breathed his 
last sigh, than by the imprisonment within its 
walls of the mild and excellent Bishop of Kilmore. 
iSit mea anima cum Bedello I 

When Irishmen consent to let the past become 
indeed History, not party politics, and begin to 
learn from it the lessons of mutual respect and 
tolerance, instead of endless bitterness and en- 
mity ; then, at last, this distracted land shall see 
the dawn of hope and peace, and begin to renew 
her yputh and rear her head amongst the proud- 
est of the nations. 



PREFACE 

TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 



Twenty-three years have gone by since the 
writer composed this small volume. It was 
undertaken at the suggestion of Thomas Davis 
for the series called "Library of Ireland," anp 
has had quite as much popularity as it deserved. 

Since the time of its publication, a very largo 
mass of historic material, then inaccessible to 
the writer, has been for the first time brought 
to light, specially illustrative of the very period 
of our annals wherein O'Neill and O'Donnell 
flourished ; so that now, to do justice to the sub- 
ject, the " Life of Hugh O'Neill " ought to be re- 
written, and at far greater length than could be 
attempted in a slight popular sketch like the 
present. Not having leisure to undertake this 
agreeable task, which would otherwise please me 
well, I am obliged to let it go with all its imper- 
fections on its head. 



XIV PEEFACE. 

But to many readers it may be desirable and 
useful that some slight account should be given 
of the actual materials which have now, by the 
zealous labours of many eminent scholars, be- 
come available for the due understanding of 
that deeply interesting era which saw the " Re- 
formation," the great struggle between Irish 
clanship and English feudahsm, and the begin- 
ning of the religious wars in our island. First in 
importance is the great work of John O'Dono- 
van — his edition of the Annals of the Four Mas- 
ters, with coitions and learned notes, topograph- 
ical, historical, exegetical. It is true that the 
portion of those annals relating to the period 
embraced in this work was substantially accessi- 
ble to me in the Library of the Royal Irish 
Academy, in the shape of the "M. S. Life of 
O'Donnell," often cited in the following images. 
This Life of Hugh Roe O'Donnell had been 
written by one of the venerable Four Masters 
themselves, Franciscans of Donegal Abbey, who 
indeed were not only Annalists of the Island, 
but especially historiographers to the g):eat house 
of O'Donnell ; and it had afterwards been in- 
corx)orated almost entirely in the "Annals." 
This old M. S. however, was but poor '-ompensa- 
tion for the want of that magnific<'ut rci)ertory 
of Irish historic lore, which can iiow be read 



PREPACB, XY 

(amply annotated) by everybody, in tlie volumes 
of Doctor O'Donovan, and without the study of 
which no writer should undertake a piece of 
Irish history. 

Another indispensable Irish authority for the 
period in question is the Historia CatkoUca of 
Don Phillip O'Sullivan (Beare). A copy of the 
old Latin edition of this book existed in the 
library of Trinity College, where I could consult 
it any length ; but since then the work of O'Sul- 
livan also (which had become very rare) has 
been handsomely reproduced in Ireland. These 
two, besides the History of the Abbe Mac- 
Geoghegan (in French), which though not con- 
temporary, is an authority for that time, were 
the only strictly Irish sources from whence I 
could draw. 

Of authorities upon the English side, there 
was abundance. The most useful of these is 
Camden, — "History of Queen Elizabeth," — who 
has narrated at great length from his own i)oint 
of view, and not with very gross unfairness, the 
whole of the transactions in Ireland during the 
life of Hugh O'Neill. Two exceedingly valu- 
able books are Edmund Spencer's " View of the 
State of Ireland," and Sir. John Davies' "His- 
torical Tracts." Each of these books, though 
composed with the most virulent hatred and in- 



Xvi PEEFACE. 

science towards the Irish nation, yet casts a 
flood of light upon the social condition of the 
people, and the policy of the British Government 
about the time of that sad revolution which 
transformed chieftain and clansman into land- 
lord and tenant. The most singular Enghsh 
authority, however, is the Pacata Hiherniay 
written by Sir George Carew, but ostensibly by 
Stafford, his secretary. This work is valuable 
not only for its documents and maps, but also 
for the very open and shameless avowal of the 
system of treachery, fraud, and assassination 
set on foot by the writer himself, and by which 
he was enabled to break up the confederacy of 
the Munster lords. 

The work of Fynes Moryson must not be 
omitted, as his narrative covers almost the whole 
of O'Neill's wars : but he, though a contempor- 
ary writer, residing in Ireland, and witness of 
many of the transactions he undertakes to nar- 
rate, is extremely untrustworthy, ar d needs cor- 
roboration often, oftener contradiction. These 
books, with occasional reference to Cartes' Life 
of Ormond, Captain Lee's "Memorial," and 
Bishop Mant's History of the Irish Church, 
constituted the rather imperfect stock of author- 
ities on which I was bold enough to venture 
upon the narrative of the Life of the last 



of the Princes of Tyrone. Those who may 
hereafter undertake to give a fuller and better 
account of Hugh O'Neill and his desperate 
struggle against English " civilization," will have 
a much more extensive course of reading to go 
^through. 

Besides the mighty tomes of O 'Donovan's 
Four Masters, there are numerous family histor- 
ies lately published, containing innumerable 
documents and letters, which, though not per- 
hai)s worth reading for their own sake, yet often 
give a vivid glimpse into the interior of some 
Franco-Hibernian Castle or Scotic chieftain's 
stronghold, shewing us the inmates as they 
lived and moved in those wild times. One of 
the most voluminous of these is "The Life and 
Letters of Florence MacCarthy Mor " — who was 
O'Neill's slippery lieutenant in Munster. This 
is an octavo volume of over 500 pages ; written 
of course by one of the Olan-Caura, and certainly 
giving all the details concerning that able but 
treacherous chief, which the world will ever 
wish to know. Of other family histories may 
be named : " The Earls of Kildare," History of 
the O'Briens of Thomond, by O'Donoghue ; 
A "Selection from the Family Archives of the 
MacGillicuddy of the Keeks, by Maziere Brady, 
Vicar of Donoghpatrick, &c. 



XVm PREFACE. 

With regard to the changes which took place 
in the possession of church property, the sup- 
pression of monasteries, and the earliest penal 
laws for religion, many good compilations now 
exist which are of great value to the student ; 
especially "The Irish Eeformation ; or the 
alleged conversion of the Irish bishops at the 
accession of Queen Elisabeth, and the assumed 
descent of the j)resent established Hierarchy in 
Ireland from the Ancient Irish Church — dis- 
proved " by Dr. Maziere Brady. The author, 
though a Protestant Rector, takes X3art, unex- 
pectedly, with the Irish Catholic Church in her 
historical dispute with the Anglicans touching 
the descent of orders. His subject necessarily 
obliged him to investigate minutely the civil 
transactions of the sixteenth century in Ireland, 
which accompanied and illustrated the ecclesi- 
astical changes. It has been heretofore insisted 
upon by Anglican writers that the Catholic 
bishops in Ireland, as a body, accepted the pre- 
tended reformation of Elizabeth ; that the Irish 
hierarchy, church and nation, renounced their 
allegiance to the Bishoi^ of Rome, and to the 
doctrine of the Roman Church ; that the apos- 
tolic succession was regularly transmitted to tho 
Protestant bishops of Ireland, andtliat the pres- 
ent Roman Catholic hierarchy and church were 



PREFACE. XIX 

estahlislied de novo, in scliismatical manner, by 
emissaries of the Pope. Consequently, they 
say, the Protestant archbishops of Armagh and 
Dublin are the canonical successors of St. Pat- 
rick and St. Lawrence ; the other Protestant 
bishops are also the canonical successors to the 
ancient Catholic bishops of the sees they pre- 
tend to fill, the ecclesiastical property legally 
belongs to the Protestant establishment, and 
the Roman Catholic bishops are intruders who 
have drawn the majority of the Irish people into 
a schism. Dr. Brady has laboriously and tri- 
umphantly refuted all this ; and Mr. Froude, the 
English historian, has given his fuU indorse- 
ment to Dr. Brady's statements. Dr. Brady 
proves that, at the most, two of the Marian 
bishops submitted to Elizabeth — Curwen, of 
Dublin, and OTihil, of Leighlin. Curwin's 
apostacy is a notorious fact, but that of OTihil 
is denied by Dr. Moran, who adduces evidence 
against it. Curwen was an Englishman, and 
consecrated by English bishoj^s. Therefore, 
according to Dr. Brady, but one Irishman, hav- 
ing Irish consecration, deserted the communion 
of the Pope for that of the Queen and Parker. 
He goes through all the Irish sees seriatim, prov- 
ing the continuity of succession from their an- 
cient to their modern Catholic incumbents, and 



XX PEEFACE. 

proving, also, the forcible intrusion of Protest- 
ants by degrees, and with many breaks, into 
the same titular sees. He states the conclusion 
derived from his facts and arguments thus : ' 'In 
point of fact, the Irish nation, from 1558 to 
1867 has continued in communion with Rome, 
never having ceased to be, in its clergy, priests, 
and people, as thoroughly Roman Catholic as at 
the accession of Elizabeth," (p. 199.) The claim 
of a succession of orders by a line traceable to 
the old Irish hierarchy is also disposed of. The 
doctor shows that whatever orders the Irish 
Protestant church has are derived from Curwen, 
and from him alone, through Loftus, who was 
consecrated by him to Armagh, and thence 
transferred to Dublin, in lieu of Curwen himself 
who was transferred to Oxford. Of course he 
does not deny the validity of the orders, but 
merely the fact that they descend from an Irish 
source. 

In examining this canonical controversy the 
author also sheds light upon the civil transac- 
tions ; and as O'Neill was holding his country 
against the English not only as Prince of Ulster, 
but as chief champion of the Catholic religion 
in Ireland, the eccle3iastical affairs of the period 
are altogether relevant, and needful for a due un- 
derstanding of O'Neill's true cause and position. 



PBEFACE. XXI 

Witli the same view the works of Dr. Moran 
of Dublin, especially his A7'chbishops of Duhliny 
as well as the Church Histories of Dr. Lanigan, 
Father Brenan, O. S. F., and Father A. Cogan 
of Navan [History of the Diocese of Meath] 
must all be consulted. 

Amongst other needful authorities, or compi- 
lations to be consulted, must be mentioned sev- 
eral excellent papers in the Ulster Archceological 
Journal, Shirley's Original Letters, State papers, 
both in London and Dublin, some of which have 
been published ; and lastly, and especially, the 
late admirable book of Father Meehan of Dub- 
lin, The Fate and Fortunes of Hugh O'Neill, Earl 
of Tyrone, and Hugh O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrcon- 
nell; their Flight, Vicissitudes and Death in 
Exile. Mr. Meehan, indeed, prof esses to take uj) 
the narrative where this present writer has 
di'opped it : yet he has supplied much authen- 
tic information with regard to the chief's last 
campaign, his surrender at Mellifont, his visit 
to England, his life in his own country after- 
wards, the conspiracy for his destruction, his 
escape from the toils of his enemies, his wander- 
ings in Europe, his plans for return and his 
death in Eome — all of which, for want of space, 
and also in part for want of authorities, had 
to be passed over lightly in the unpretending 



XXn PEEFACE. 

little volnme caUed, ''Life of Hiigli O'Neill." It 
may be added that Mr. Meehan lias given us, by 
way of episode, a seperate chapter, from an ear- 
lier period of the Prince's life, his courtshii^ and 
marriage — the romance of the beautiful Mabel 
Bagnal, sister of his enemy, the Marshal. 

It is needless here to speak of the ancient 
Irish manuscripts and precious materials of our 
history as enumerated, classified and described 
in the great work of Eugene O'Curry: for all 
these documents, except the Annals of the Four 
Masters, stop short of the time of O'Neill's 
wars, and this has no pretension to be a general 
bibliography of Irish History, but only a sketch 
of the field to be investigated by any one who 
shall hereafter aspire to write a Life of O'Neill 
which may be worthy of the subject ; as the 
present volume is not. Nobody can be more 
sensible of this than the writer ; who undertook 
it in part to gratify a dear friend, and in part to 
aid more or less in the awakening of the minds 
of Irish young men to the dignity and im- 
portance of the history of their own native 
island. 

That it has had some share of influence in that 
direction I am happy to believe. J. M. 

Fordham, N. Y. St. Patrick's Day, 18G8. 



LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 



CHAPTER I. 

CON THE LAME, AND HIS TIMES. 

A. D. 15:;5_1550. 

When Con 0*Neill, surnamed Baccagh, reigned 
31 Ulster, the far greater portion of this island 
owed no allegiance and paid no obedience to the 
king or laws of England. More than two hun- 
dred years had gone by since the northern Irish, 
aided by Edward Bruce of Scotland, had de- 
stroyed every vestige of foreign dominion in 
Ulster ; and the few Anglo-Norman families that 
had got footing there, under De Courcy und Do 
Lacy, were long since, by intermarriage, gossi- 
pre(l, and fostering, blended with the Irish tribes 
used Irish customs, disdained to ride with stir» 
rups, wore crommeal and coolun^ submitted tc 
the Brehon laws, forgot vassalage, and liege-ho- 
mage, and all feudal tenure, whether by kright 
service, escuage, or other, — nay, forgot their 
lawuatre and their very names. Like the Bcr- 



14 LIFE OF HUGH o'neILL. 

minghams and De Burgos of Connaught, who 
became Mac Feorais and Mac Williams, Eighter 
and Oughter, some writers will have it that the 
haughty Mac Mahons of Monaghan, with all 
their fierce resistance to English laws and Eng- 
lish sheriffs, were no more than so many Norman 
Fitzurses ; — true Sons of Bears, and claiming 
that descent both in their original langue d'oui 
and their adopted Irish. And the Mac Swynes, 
from beyond Lough Swilly, sent yearly their tri- 
bute of cows to O'Donnell, never demurring on 
the ground that they were a branch of the 
knightly De Veres of Oxford.* 

So attractive and genial was that Irish life of 
pastoral independence, and " strenuous liberty ;" 
so kindly the Irish affections ; so honey-sweet 
the Celtic accents on the tongue of foster-nurses 
and Irish maidens : — " which," says Edmund 
Spenser, " are two most dangerous infections :** 
for " The speach being Irish, the heart must 
needes bee Irish," 

Laws, indeed, were from time to time enacted 
by the small English colony of Leinster, in their 
local parliament, to forbid all such friendly deal- 



* Spenser's " View of the State of Ireland," p. 108. 
Bat the Irish annalists (probably a better autliority) make 
both these families old Irish. Mac Mahon is said to have 
been, like the Mac Guires and O'Hanlons, descended 
from Colla-na-Chricli of the race of Ileremon, (See 
Connellan's " Four Masters, " note in p. 3.) For the 
Mac Swynes or Mac Sweenys, said to be a branch of tlie 
north, Hy Niall, see the same book, p. 52 ; yet Thi- 
erry and other writers have adopted Spenser's statement 
about these two families. — Norman Con. Conclusion, 



LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILL. 15 

ingg witli tlie " Irish enemy," under penalties', 
statutes which sounded terrible in Kilkenny and 
Dublin, but were of no force in the Irish coun- 
try, where the " degenerate" English soon learned 
to forget the tongue in which those statutes were 
expressed, and to despise the authority that had 
presumed to enact them. 

Yet there was, in the sixteenth century, no 
Irish nation. They had no national council, as 
of old; no supreme monarch or Ard-Righ, to 
concentrate the powers of the island for any com- 
mon object. Save the tie of a common language, 
the chieftain of Clan-Conal had no more con- 
nexion with the lord of Clan-Carrha, than either 
had with the English Pale. The Anglo-Norman 
colony was regarded rather as one of the inde- 
pendent tribes of the island ; *' an inferior sept,"* 
often a tributary sept,f which had got settled 
there ; than what it really was, a garrison holding 
for a foreign king, the insidious enemy of them 
all : and the Irish in their frequent wars amongst 
themselves, sometimes had the troops of the Pale, 
as well as the powerful Scottish colony of An- 
trim for auxiliaries on one side or the other. 

Frequently the English carried the banners of 
tlie Pale into some Irish country with which they 
were then at war; burning and plundering in 
their march, until a force could be drawn together 
Ftrong enough to drive them home : and as often 
were the war-cries of an O'Neill or an O'Connor 



• Leland, voL 2, p. 83. 

t State Papers, Temp. Tien. VIII. cited in O'Connell's 
Memoir* 



2g LITE OF HUGH O'NEILL.. 

heard at the Boyne and Liffey, to the very gates 
of Dublin ; while the English were shut up 
everywhere in their castles and walled towns 
until the black rent was levied and the storm 
Lad passed. But, save in the four counties of 
the Pale and a few maritime cities, there was no 
attempt at the exercise of either legislative or 
executive authority on the part of the English 
government. 

The throne of England was filled by King 
Henry the Eighth, who styled himself King of 
England, France^ and Ireland; — of France in 
virtue of the town of Calais, and of Ireland, be- 
cause of those bands of his adventurous subjects 
who garrisoned the Pale. But Henry was not 
satisfied with temporal sovereignty. Like the 
Roman emperors, he determined to unite in his 
own person all authority of every kind, and to 
be acknowledged Pontifcx moximus. His par- 
liament had, without scruple, bestowed on him 
the supreme Headship of the Church ; never 
doubting their power to give it : for the legisla- 
ture of England has always regulated its religion, 
pronouncing this way or that upon true doctrine, 
like an oecumenic council, and deciding upon the 
successorship to the apostles with no more hesi- 
tation than on the rival claims to a disputed 
peerage. 

And having established his spiritual supremacy 
in England, and desiring to encroach further 
upon the jurisdiction of his rival the pope, King 
Henry caused an act to be passed in his parlia- 
ment of the Pale, duly enacting the supremacy 
of the English king over the church of Ireland—. 



LIFE OF HUGH O NEILIi, 17 

'* forasmuch," say those legislators, " as Ireland 
was depending and belonging justly and right- 
fully to the imperial crown of England." And 
so began the " Reformation" in this island. 

Here a difficulty arose, or rather several diffi- 
culties ; for tlie claim of England to govern this 
country had always been held to rest upon that 
surprising grant of Pope Adrian IV., which 
conferred Ireland upon Henry the Second as a 
fief ; and to deny the papal authority w^as to de- 
stroy the only title which the crown of England 
had ever pretended over this island ; whereby 
hangs a controversy, partly political, partly theo- 
logical, which greatly agitated the pedants of both 
countries at that period ; but is interesting now 
neither to gods nor men. Yet for the clear un- 
derstanding of some terms which must often 
occur in the following story, we may refer to 
the argument for English dominion used by 
one of its most learned advocates. " Whatso- 
ever become," says Archbishop Ussher,* " of 
the pope's idle challenges, the crown of England 
hath otherwise obtained an undoubted right unto 
the sovereignty of this jcountry ; partly by con- 
quest, prosecuted at first upon occasion of a social 
war, partly by the several submissions of the 
chieftains of the land made afterwards. For 
whereas it is free for all men, although they have 
been formerly quit from all subjection, to re- 
nounce their own right, yet now, in these our 
days (saith Giraldus Cambrensis in his History 
of the Conquest of Ireland) all the princes of 

• Religion of the ancient Irish. 
B 



18 



lilFE OF HUGH O NEILL. 



Ireland did voluntarily submit, and bind them- 
selves with firm bonds of faith and oath unto 
Henry the Second, king of England." 

On which " submissions" we remark, first, that 
the same Henry the Second did, with firm bonds 
of faith and oath, submit and perform homage to 
Louis the Seventh of France ; and " with head 
uncovered and belt ungirt, with sword and spurs 
removed, he placed his hands, kneeling, between 
those of the lord, and promised to become his 
man from thenceforward, and to serve him with 
life and limb and worldly honour, faithhilly and 
loyally;"* — that King Edward the Third, in 
like humble guise, did homage at the feet of an- 
other French sovereign ; — but that those two 
English kings were engaged in endless wars with 
those very suzerains : and never incurred thereby 
the charge of perfidy or rebellion.^ And the 
second remark is, that such submissions, by an 
Irish chieftain, either in the twelfth or any other 
century, were not only a mere form, but had no 



* For form of Liege-homage, see Hallam, Mid. Ages, 
vol. 1, p. 176. 

f No doubt it Avas as peers of France, not as kings of 
England, tliey did homage to the French king ; but they 
made war upon him in both capacities, and with all the 
power of all their dominions, insular and continental. 
Hallam explains the law of the case, and Thierry the 
rationale of it. The former says, " It was always ne- 
cessary for a vassal to renounce his homage, before he 
made war on his lord." (Mid. Ages, vol. 1, p. 176, note.) 
And Tliierry informs us that obligations of this kind 
*' were very vague in their tenor, and were mostly taken 
with a bad grace, and in some sort as a mere matter of 
form." — Wliitaker's edition, p. 161 



LIFE OP HUGH o'NEILL. 1) 

force or signilicance even as a form : becauea 
those chiefs were not, themselves, feudal lords: 
they had neither fiefs nor vassals : like the lead- 
ers of the ancient Franks, they were the elected 
captains of a tribe of freemen ; and could not, 
by donning the coronet and robes of a foreign 
noble, change their countrymen into the subjects 
of an alien prince, nor involve them in that great 
feudal system, which, like every other form of. 
national polity must grow with a people's growth, 
and weave itself, in the " Loom of Time" out of 
the very elements of its being. 

But enough of this technical disquisition. As 
Henry was not free in conscience, to have and to 
hold under the pope any longer, he caused his 
Parliament of the Pale, in the year 1542, to de- 
clare him " King of Ireland" in his own right, 
the first English monarch who assumed that title : 
and in the same year, at his palace of Greenwich, 
was beheld a notable thing, — the O'Neill of Ul- 
ster submitting himself as liege-man to an Eng- 
lish king, — renouncing the royal name of O'Neill, 
*' in comparison of which," says Camden, " the 
very title of Ca3sar is contemptible in Ireland,"* 
— taking upon him the barbarian Anglo- Saxon 
title of Jarl^ or Earl, of Tyrone ; and doing ho- 
mage to Henry as King of Ireland and Head of 
the Church ; who on his side adorned him with 
a golden chain, saluted him beloved cousin, " and 
so returned him richly plated."f 

And now we first hear of Matthew O'Neill, 

• Camden, 2 Eliz. 

\ Campion, " Historie of Ireland," p. 181. 



20 I.rPE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

Con*s son, (or reputed son, for in Ireland he was 
believed to be the offspring of a smith of Dun- 
dalk,) called by the Irish Fardoragh, but passing 
at Greenwich under the outlandish style of Baron 
Dungannon, a title which he dearly rued. 

Nor are the O'Neills alone in their strange ho- 
nours. Mac Gilla Phadruig becomes Fitzpatrick, 
and Baron of Upper Ossory. The O'Brien of 
Thomond, forgetful of the glories of Kincora, 
lays down at Henry's feet his dignity of Chief 
Dal-Cais, and arises Earl of Thomond ; his son, 
Baron of Inis-Hy-Quin ; his nephew, Baron of 
Ibracken, by " letters patent," with broad seal of 
England, with official ceremonial of Garter-king, 
and the rest ; with remainders, expectancies, es- 
tates tail and other jargon of English law, por- 
tentous in the ears of Filea and Brehon. 

The southern chiefs, indeed, had a more sub- 
stantial reward for their complaisance than those 
empty dignities of earl and baron. The revenues 
of all the suppressed abbeys of Thomond with 
patronage of church livings, were annexed to 
their lordships, and so was upheld the respectabi- 
lity of the peerage. For in those years there was 
a sweeping " suppression" in progress, of all resli- 
gious houses m that part of the island which was 
under the control of the new Head of the Church ; 
and many of the local princes, who could well 
have defied his power, were content to sacrifice 
the ancient monasteries endowed by their ances- 
tors, to the reforming rage of Henry, on condition 
of themselves receiving the spoil. The fair pos- 
sessions of abbeys and priories were therefore 
left almost invariablj^ in the hands of their neigh 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 21 

bouring lords, and seem to Lave been the stipu- 
lated price of their servile allegiance ; so that 
even George Browne, the king's archbishop of 
Dublin, could not by most diligent suit obtain for 
his own share the single nunnery of Grrace Dieu, 
nor even " a very poor house of friars," called 
New Abbey, " a house of the obstinates' religion 
which lay very commodious for him by Bally- 
more." They were both destined for other claim- 
ants who had earned them worthily. 

In all Ireland were at that time three hundred 
and seventy of such establishments, of various 
orders, where the religious passed a life of devo- 
tional retirement, feeding the poor, entertaining 
strangers, and tending the sick, for no earthly 
reward, but for love of blessed charity, and the 
health of their founders' souls. 

There was abundance of plunder in every pro- 
vince for those who would renounce their faith 
and betray their country. But Con O'Neill, to 
his honour be it said, understood not the power 
of his new suzerain, whether regal or spiritual, to 
extend so far ; nor is it easy to say hoiv far he 
was willing to admit such power. For this was 
the same chief who had formerly cursed his off- 
spring if they should ever speak the Saxon 
tongue, sow corn, or build houses in imitation of 
the English, and who, to demonstrate his views 
of Henry's Headship, had on the first rumour of 
*' Reformation" led his troops to the south, burned 
Atherdee and Navan to the ground, and from 
the hill of Tarah warned off the servile nobles of 
the Pale and their reforming deputy far from the 
frontiers of Ulster. 



22 LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 

While Con therefore, held the cliieftaincy of 
Tyr-owen, and long after, the monasteries of hia 
country stood seen re. Though formally " given 
and granted" to King Henry along with the reli- 
gious houses of other provinces, by those who had 
no title either to give or to grant, yet the com- 
missioners appointed to reduce them into charge 
did not proceed (for excellent reasons) to hold 
the usual inquest on their possessions, to inven- 
tory their chattels and ornaments, or expel their 
peaceful inhabitants ; and for seventy years after 
the " suppression" the monks of Donegal, Kilma- 
crenan, and RathmuUan, of Derry, Dungiven, 
Coleraine, and Dnngannon, imder the sheltering 
power of O'Neill and O'Donnell " escaped," says 
the Abbe Mac Geoghegan, " the sacrilegious fury 
of the heretics :" or as the same fact is stated by 
the Presbyterian historian,* the abbeys though 
long since suppressed, " were not resumed into 
the hands of the king, nor their useless inmates 
expelled until the reign of James the Fii'st." 

Yet the northern Irish liked not the new earl, 
nor Jiis honours, however unencumbered by foreign 
laws and usages. The bards of Ulster had no 
songs of praise for the obsequious liegeman of a 
foreign prince. O'Donnell refused to send hira 
his customary tribute for Inis-Owen : Mac Guire 
of Fermanagh thought scorn to be the Uriaght 
of such an O'-Neill as this ; and Con Baccagh 
soon found that he was no longer the prince of 
the North, and must speedily give place to wor- 

* Dr. Reirl, " History of the Presbyterian Church fn 
Ird&nd," vol. 1, p. 77. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'NETLli. 23 

tliier scions of that ancient stock ; who happily 
were not wanting. 

For, unmindful of court intrigue, and little 
versed in the lore of Saxon heraldry, there was, 
growing up to manhood, amongst the hills of 
Ulster, another son of Con ; one of the proudest 
and fiercest O'Neills that had appeared there since 
he of theNine Hostages ; and his name was Shane. 
Chasing the wolf and deer with his foster-bre- 
thren in the forests of Tyr-owen, and by the 
shores of the lake of Feval ; learning from the 
lips of bard and seanaghy the ancient glories 
and achievements of the Hy-Nial, this Shane 
liad grown to believe, with all his soul, that the 
Kinel-Eoghain were the hero-race most favoured 
by heaven ; that Tyr-owen was the eye of Erin, 
and the very pride of the earth : and that of all 
noble and royal titles of honour and sovereignty, 
by far the most dread and illustrious was " The 
O'Neill." 

And behold ! just as the impetuous youth has 
reached manhood, and feels within him the 
strength and fiery spirit to uphold the honour of 
his race, that proud name is to be extinguished. 
The golden collar of an O'Neill, the sacred chair 
of TuUogh-oge, are to be made of no account ; 
lost or forgotten in these unheard-of peerages 
of the stranger. By the soul of Con More ! By 
the awful grave of Caille Nial ! this must not be. 
Let his father plume himself in his foreign fea- 
thers : let the bastard Matthew maintain, as best 
he may, his " estate tail" and coTonet of Dungan- 
non ; he, Shane, will be an O'Neill : — The 
O'Neill ; for the clansmen of Tyr-owen, as 



24 LIFE OF HUGH 0*NEIIJL. 

men are wont to do, soon found out the man wlio 
was fit to be their chief. 

It were long to tell, how the younger brethren 
of Shane stood by him for the honour of Tyr- 
owen ; how the bards espoused, as ever, the 
cause of nationhood, and with harp and voice 
kindled the ancient spirit of Erin ; how there 
was war in Ulster till the Baron of Dungannon 
fell (by treachery say English chroniclers) ; how 
Con the Lame recognized his true son, and re- 
pented him of his base homaging and his foreign 
earldom ; and how, at last, the haughty Shane 
sat upon the chair of Stone, was invested with 
the white wand of sovereignty, and duly made 
♦ie O'Neill, and Prince of Tyr-owen. 

Baron Matthew, as we said, fell ; whether by 
treachery or on battle field, certain it is, in the 
course of that war he lost both life and coronet :— 
" a lusty horseman, well-beloved, and a tried 
aouldiour,"* but no match for the ardent and re- 
solute Shane. For that generation, the blood of 
the Dundalk smith, was not to prevail ; but, in 
the halls of Dungannon, Matthew left an infant 
son, one Aodh, or Hugh, who goes a fostering 
among the English and is " preserved by them 
from Shane,"! (not without a politic design,) and 
disappears for a season. 

•' Campion, '* Historie cf Ireland," p, 1891 
t Moryson. 



JLIFE OP HUGH 0*NEIIX. 25 



CHAPTER n. 

SHANE THE PROUD AND THE REFORMATION. 

A. D. 1550—1567. 

The " Reformation" was meanwhile proceeding 
vigorously in the English colony ; and the his- 
tory of Ireland, from the period at which we have 
opened its page, is so deeply coloured by that 
event and its consequences, that frequent refe- 
rence to its course and progress is essential to 
clearness of narrative. 

On the archiepiscopal chair of St. Laurence 
0' Toole,* sat one George Browne, an apostate 
(or reformed) friar ; raised to that eminence by 
the King of England, in the exercise of his pon- 
tifical supremacy ; and to him, with four other 
persons, was directed in the thirtieth year oi 
King Henry, a commission " to investigate, in- 
quire, and search out where, within the said land 
of Ireland, there were any notable images or 
reliques, at which the simple people of the said 
Lord the King were wont super stitiously to meet 
together * * and that they should break 
in pieces, deform, and bear away the same, so that 
no fooleries of this kind might thenceforth for 

• Properly Lorcan O'Tuathail. 



26 I^TFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 

ever be in use in the said land :" a commission 
which was executed, wherever the English power 
extended, with all the zeal that religion and ra- 
pacity could both inspire. 

The Report of these commissioners is still ex- 
tant, one of the most singular statements of ac- 
count on record ; in which they specify the pro- 
perty, " by virtue of the commission of the lord 
the king aforesaid, into the hands of the lord 
the king, taken and appraised, and by the 
before-recited title sold." £326 2*. \\d. is 
stated to be " the price of divers pieces of gold 
and silver, in mass and bullion, and also of cer- 
tain precious stones set in gold and silver, and of 
silver ornaments and other things upon divers 
images, pictures, and reliques." Three cathe- 
dral churches, St. Patrick's Dublin, Leighlin, and 
Ferns, with many monasteries, priories, parish 
churches and chapels, are stated to have been 
stripped. " The price of divers vases, jewels, and 
ornaments of gold and silver, and bells, and the 
utensils and household stuff of superstitious build- 
ings," is set down at £1710 2^. Qd. and "one 
thousand pounds of wax, manufactured into can- 
dles, tapers, images, and pictures," produced £20.* 

So far the material reform had been effected, 
but on the death of Henry the Eighth, the doc- 
trinal revolution was to begin in good earnest. 
Somerset, the Protector, was a Zuinglian : and 
under the advice of Cranmer, (who was a Zuin- 



• Original account in the Eecord-Office, Custom- 
IFouse, Dublin, cited in Dr. Mant's " Hi&tory of the 
Church of Ireland," p. 163. 



lAVK OF HUGH O'NEILL. 27 

glian also, from the moment of King Henry's 
death,) it was resolved in his councils to make a 
more strenuous effort for establishing the Refor- 
mation in Ireland. In furtherance of that object. 
Sir Edward Bellingham was sent over, a very 
singular apostolic missionary, " with 600 horse 
and 400 foot." An " order of council" was issued, 
enjoining the use of a new Liturgy. And shortly 
after one Bale was appointed by the king to the 
bishopric of Ossory, a bold and uncompromising 
reformer, who was not content, like the king's bi- 
shops in general, to reside in Dublin, under the 
shelter of the castle, but proceeded at once to Kil- 
kenny, and undertook his charge. A most re- 
markable " Vocacyon," as he calls it, was this 
episcopal visit of Dr. Bale to his diocese, and may 
serve as an instance of the method in which the 
Church of Ireland was to be reformed. 

The new bishop being ignorant of Irish, and 
most of his clergy, with all their flocks, ignorant 
of English, his preaching though never so ener- 
getic, could have little effect upon such a diocese, 
'i'herefore he ordered his servants to invade the 
churches, to pull down the images and pictures, 
and to destroy the vestments and ornaments 
which savoured of popery. The people of Kil- 
kenny bore the preaching very well, so long as 
they did not understand it ; but there was no 
mistaking such conduct as this. They rose against 
him, killed five of his servants before his face, 
and he himself hardly escaped. As he relates the 
Btory himself: "I preached the gospel of the 
knowledge and right invocation of God. I main- 
tained the political order by doctrine and moved 



28 LIFE OP HUGH O'NEILL. 

tlie commons to obey th(u'r magistrates. But 
w^hen I once sought to destroy the idohitries, and 
dissolve the hypocrites yokes, then followed 
angers, slanders, conspiracies, and in the end the 
slaughter of men."* 

Hitherto the religious innovations had been 
confined within very narrow limits ; and in the 
North the alarm of them was not yet heard. 
Two clergymen, indeed, named Dowdall and 
Goodacre, had been successively appointed the 
nominal (or titular) archbishops of Armagh by 
Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth ; but 
tliey scarcely appear to have visited their diocese, 
and certainly attempted no reformation there. 
The former of these, though not appointed by the 
provision of the pope, was a stanch Catholic, 
and upon the death of Henry, zealously resisted 
any change of doctrine or practice in the church. 
Though a king's bishop, he did not shift and veer, 
as was expected, with the Court religion of the 
day ; and for his contumacy in that respect, the 
new English pontiff, in October, 1551, issued a 
bull, (or, "letters patent," as it was termed,) 
gravely depriving Dowdall, and the see of Ar- 
magh, of the Primacy of Ireland, and conferring 
that dignity upon the Archbishop of Dublin and 
his successors ;f in acknowledgment of the ser- 
vices of Browne, who better knew the duties of a 
court bishop. 

But all these arrangements were unheard of or 



• •'Vocacyon of John Bale to the bishopric of Os- 
sory." 
t Waraci, An. IP-**, foUo 



LIFE OF HUGH O NEILL. 29 

disregarded in Ulster. The Coarha of St. Pa- 
trick still sat upon the archiepiscopal throne of 
Armagh ; and the sees of the North, protected 
bj the O'Neills and O'Donnells, and ruled bj the 
primates Cromer and Waucop, long continued 
free from invasion by the barbarian mission- 
aries of England. In the words of Dr. Leland, 
" the people, removed beyond the sphere of 
English law, had not known or not regarded 
the ordinances lately made with respect to re- 
ligion, nor conside*rBd themselves as interested 
or concerned in any regulations hereafter to be 
made."* 

Shane O'Neill troubled himself little about the 
*' Reformation" so long as it kept far from his 
borders. There was work enough for him to do 
at home. O'Rielly of Cavan dared to question 
the supremacy of O'Neill, and had to be brought 
to reason by a fierce inroad and a bloody defeat. 
The chief of Tyrconnell was a more formidable 
antagonist. The O'Donnells had long rivalled 
in power their kindred tribe of Tyr-owen ; had 
reduced some of the tributary chieftains, former 
Uriaghts of the O'Neill, under their own sway ; 
had wrested from the Kinel-owen their ancient 
territory of Innishowen for which O'Donnell paid 
tribute to O'Neill, though always with reluctance ; 
and sometimes he set the prince of Ulster at de- 
fiance and denied the tribute altogether : which 
had in former days produced furious wars, and 
that famous diplomatic correspondence — empha« 
tic protocols, breaking off with significant aposio- 

• Leland, ♦♦Hist, of Ireland," rol. 2, p. 194. 



30 LIFE or HUGH o'NEILL. 

pests, — " Send me my tribute, or else ** ** I 

owe thee no tribute, and if " 

Shane was not the man to suffer tlie rights of 
O'Neill to be questioned. With a large army lie 
burst into Tyrconnell, and too recklessly pursued 
his enemies into the recesses of their mountain- 
ous country. In a night attack upon liis camp, 
his troops were entirely dispersed : Shane him- 
self narrowly escaped being surprised in his tent, 
amongst the galloglasses of his guard : and 
for that time was obliged to retreat, or even 
to fly ; swimming the rivers, say the chroni- 
clers of Donegal, and traversing the mountains 
by unknown ways. But he vowed a dire re- 
venge, and fearfully fulfilled that vow another 
day. 

The plunder of O'Neill's camp fell to the vic- 
torious O'Donnells : and the scene upon that bat- 
tle-field might remind us of Chlodowig and his 
Franks, dividing their spoil upon the plains of 
Soissons. " A vast plenty of arms, clothing, 
and horses fell to the share of the victors, the 
prodigious quantity of which booty may be judged 
by this, that when they came to divide the spoiJ 
by lots, eighty horses, besides O'Neill's own 
horse, fell to the share of Con the son of Cal- 
vagh.* 

The O'Donnells did not long boast of their 
victory, till a fresh army from Tyr-owen crossed 
the Foyle and carried havoc and ruin to the 
heart of their country. Calvagh O'Donnell was 

* "Ware, " Antiq. of Ireland ;" citing the "Annals of 
Donegal." (i'our Masters.) 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 31 

defeated in battle, his lands were wasted and 
plundered, and the chieftain and his wife carried 
off in chains by the triumphant Shane. Calvagh 
indeed was afterwards set free ; but his wife re- 
mained as part of the spoils of war, in the halls of 
Benburb ; became the concubine of the haughty 
conqueror, and bore him sons and daugliters : in 
especial one son, whom they christened Hugh, 
and surnamed na Gaveloch, " Of the fetters," or 
the Fettered — for whom it had been better if he 
had never been born. 

A wild and turbulent career had this Shane, 
and few days of rest since he took the leading of 
that warlike sept : quelling Mac Guire of Fer- 
managh ; bridling the marauding Scots ; on all 
sides strengthening the friends and crushing the 
foes of Tyr-owen : crushing them indeed too 
fiercely; whereby he treasured up for himself 
wrath, which was to burst at a future day upon 
his head. 

At last the impetuous energy of this chief pre- 
vailed, and carried the sway of O'Neill higher 
than it had reached under any of his predeces- 
sors since the race had given monarchs to Ire- 
land. From Fanad to Dundalk, from Ballyshan- 
non to Dundrum, was no chief able to resist hia 
power. So that, in 1558, when Elizabeth as- 
cended the throne of England, the O'Neill, as 
reason was, predominated in Ulster. 

The English government seems to have deter- 
mined that either by force or otherwise,* the 

• " By all manner of means, as well by force as others 
wise." — Instructions to Sussex. Desid. Cur, Hiberntcai 
p. 3. 



32 LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

Nortliern prince must be destroyed. Sir Henry 
Sidney (who was administering tlie government 
of the Pale, in ilm absence of Sussex) marched 
northward as far as Dundalk and invited the 
chief to a conference. Shane O'Neill was then 
at his house of the Fews, between Dundalk and 
Armagh ; and he seems to have entertained some 
fears that Sidney meant him foul play in this 
proposed interview. He therefore declined the 
invitation ; but sent a message that if Sir Plenry, 
of his courtesy, would visit his poor house, and 
attend a christening there, and be gossip to his 
child, it would please him well. Sir Henry at- 
tended him, was treated with all princely hospi- 
tality; and Shane took the trouble to explain 
to him, so far as his English ideas would admit 
tlie information, how the Queen of England had 
no jurisdiction in Ulster; how the "surrender" 
and re-investment of Con Baccagh were void by 
the Irish laws, as he was only chieftain for his 
life, " nor could have more by the law of Tanis- 
try ; nor could surrender but by consent of the 
laws of his country j" how he, Shane, being the 
lawful son of Con, and also elected by his sept, 
and moreover able to defend his rights by the 
sword, was now the true prince and chieftain of 
Ulster, and that as he meddled not with tho 
Queen of England's territories, so he would take 
care she should not interfere with his.* 

• This visit of Sidney was received by the Irish as a 
• submission,' and '* although the insolence of this over- 
ture," says Leland, *'was fully conceived, yet it was 
deemed expedient to comply with it." 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 33 

"When the Earl of Sussex returned to his go- 
vernment several unsuccessful expeditions were 
made to the North in order, either bv war or di- 
plomacy to reduce this " Arch-Traitor," as th3 
English chroniclers dare to term him ; and at 
length " the queen resolved," says Camden, " to 
disannul the patent of King Henry the Eighth, 
wherein he declared Matthew (falsely supposed 
to be the son of Con) to be the successor of his 
father, and to bestow upon this Shane, as his 
undoubted son and heir, the honourable title of 
Earl of Tyr-owen and Baron of Dungannon."* 
Yes : they would now shower their tinsel ho- 
nours upon him ; set his foot upon the necks of all 
his enemies ; enrich him with the spoil of nu- 
merous abbeys ; — let him only consent to kneel 
at the footstool of a foreign throne, and place his 
country under the iron heel of English power. 

But Shane the Proud despised those paltry 
coronets. " Letters patent," could not strengthen 
him in Tyr-owen ; and for the abbeys, if he had 
been reformer enough he could have robbed them 
for himself. In the language of the English 
chronicler : " When he saw that he was able to 
levy of his own followers one thousand horse and 
four thousand foot, and had already a guard of 
seven hundred men, he disdained, in barbarous 
pride, all such honourable titles in comparison of 
the name of O'Neill, and vaunted himself among 
his own people to be king of Ulster."f 

Yet Shane was willing to live at peace with 
England and the Pale : he appeared in Dublin 

• Camden. Q, Eliz. f lb. 



34 I'IFF OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

and announced his intention of visiting ihe <y)\in 
of London : then hearing from some of his re- 
tainers that Sussex meditated seizing him by 
treachery, and sending him to Enghind a pr- 
soner, lie proudly resolved to attend the Queen 
as became an independent sovereign. He pro- 
ceeded to London with a gallant train of guards, 
bare-headed, with curled hair (as if the statute of 
Kilkenny had never been passed) hanging down 
their shoulders, armed with battle-axes, and ar- 
rayed in their saffron doublets ; an astonishment 
to the worthy burghers of London and West- 
minster. Elizabeth received him graciously and 
tliey conversed upon Irish affairs ; but when the 
ijueen inquired by what right he had exclude^ 
young Hugh from Matthew's inheritance, " he 
answered fiercely, by very good right,"* and ex- 
plained to Elizabeth the laws and usages whicl 
prevailed in his country ; showed her that Con': 
surrender was unavailing ; that Matthew was a 
bastard, and he the true O'Neill ; and that the 
authority he exercised over his tributaries of LJl 
ster was no more than his fathers had done before 
iiim : — " Which matters forasmuch as the queen 
gave credit unto, he was sent home again with 
honour." 

Yet that treacherous court had resolved on his 
ruin ; and Elizabeth while she loaded him with 
?ionours, vowed revenge in secret, and swore 
" by God's death" that such a rascaille kern 
should not long despise her peerages and defy 
JiCi' power, 

• Camden. Q. Kli2E. 



LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL 35 

An alliance, liowever, was for the present con- 
cluded between the Queen of England and the 
prince of Tyr-owen. Shane, as a proof of his 
good faith was to exterminate the Scots of Dal- 
riada^ who were declared enemies of England — a 
duty which he readily imdertook, as the Scots 
were also enemies of his own ; or at least hai 
grown too numerous and powerful to be tolerated 
as neighbours by so imperious a chief. Yet these 
Scots of the Western Isles, Mac Neills and Mao 
Donnells, were his kinsmen and natural allies 
were, in fact, an Irish sept, of Irish speech and 
usages, and a branch of the great Clan-CoUa, 
from which had descended the O'Hanlons and 
Mac Gwires of Ulster.* For ages they had pos- 
sessed the " glynns" or mountainous country oi 
Antrim, and were the mercenary soldiers of 
every chief in the island who required and could 
reward their services. Their swords were fre- 
quent in our wars ; their names in the songs of 
all our bards : and they founded upon Irish soil 
the monasteries of Bona Margy and Limbeg, to 
make their peace with God : and there, in Irish 
earth, their bones lie buried .f 

Now, instead of making common cause with 
the Scots against their common enemy, Sliane, 
at the instance of his f^iithless all?/ of England, 
levied a cruel war upon them. On his return 
ti'om London he gathered his clansmen of Tyr- 

* J^'our Masters, by Connellan, note in page 3. 

f Dr. Reid takes care to distinguish them from liis 
Scots. He says, (Hist, of the Presbyterian Church, vol. 
1> P' 77,) "The Scots here spoken of were piraticai 
marauders and Roman Catholics from the western isles. 



36 LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILL. 

owen, crossed tlie Bann, and sought- the Ma<j 
Donnells in their strongholds of the glynns. 
Here he defeated them in two battles, slew James 
the son of Conal, their leader, wasted the country, 
and carried off Sorley Buidhe (the yellow -haired), 
brother of their chief, in chains to Tyrone, 

The English government had in the mean 
time been steadily pursuing its views of reforming 
Ireland, to which Shane O'Neill had hitherto 
paid no attention whatever. Sussex, in the se- 
cond year of the queen, held a parliament in 
Dublin which re-enacted the spiritual supremacy 
of the P^nglish monarch, and imposed on all the 
Catholic clergy (or, as the act expressed it, all 
who should maintain or defend foreign authority) 
penalties of deprivation of benefices, for the first 
offence ; for the second, the penalties of prcBmu- 
nire ; for the third, penalty of high-treason ; — 
that is to say, that all Catholic clergymen who 
would not renounce their faith must die. 

Another act passed in that parliament, and 
called the " Act of Uniformity," commanded 
the use of King Edward's liturgy (yet not the 
liturgy which had been prescribed before ; not 
his " First Book," but his " Second Book") ; 
under penalty of imprisonment for life in the 
case of all such clergymen as should a third time 
refuse to use it, or even speak disrespectfully of 
it. All persons, whether lay or clerical, who 
should " despise or deprave" the book, or cause 
any other form to be said or sung (that is to say, 
all Catholics) were to be visited with like pu- 
nishments according to the number of their of« 
forces in that kind. AU kjt rsoDs whatever, '* not 



LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 37 

having reasonable excuse," were to resort to their 
parish churches on all Sundays and holydays, 
and to abide there orderly during service, on pain 
of the censures of the church and twelve pence 
fine : — and the being a Catholic was not to be 
admitted as such " reasonable excuse," but was 
rather a serious aggravation. Finally, all arch- 
bishops and bishops were solemnly enjoined, in 
God 's namey to put this act in strict execution. 

Although the government of the Pale had no 
power to enforce their laws in the Irish country, 
the intention was that those laws should have a 
general operation wherever, and so soon as, either 
negotiation or the sword might open a way for 
them. And as the queen had not for some years 
had an archbishop of Armagh it was resolved (in 
order to assert a continual claim against the pope) 
to isupply that metropolitan see with an active re- 
Former. Adam Loftus, a young Englishman whc 
had made a favourable impression on the queen 
at a public act in Cambridge by " the elegance 
of his oratory, the comeliness of his person, and 
tis graceful address," * was raised at the age of 
twenty-eight to the nominal dignity of Arch- 
bishop of Armagh ; " the youngest archbishop," 
says Ware, " that we meet with in this see, ex- 
cept Celsus." And the North, not being yet 
ripe for foreign bishops, the queen declares in 
the letters patent that as " his archbishopric is a 
place of great charge,, in name and title only to 
be esteemed, without any worldly endowment," 
she permits him to hold the deanery of St. Pa- 

• Mant, " Hist, of the Churcli of Iiehnd," p. 268. 



38 LIFE OF HUGH o'neILL. 

U*ick*3 in the meantime. It was clear that while 
Shane O'Neill held such sway in the North, 
Loftus could be only a bishop, as it were, in par' 
tibus infidelium. And that his province must 
be first reduced by the sword before it would 
peaceably submit to the sway of his crozier. 

To make a beginning of that conquest a pow- 
c-rfiil body of English troops was sent to Derry 
under Colonel Randolph, ostensibly as auxiliaries 
against the Scots, but, in truth, to form a settle- 
ment there which might be a key to Ulster, and 
a bit between the teeth of O'Neill. These Eng- 
lish, being true reformers, made small account of 
the sanctity of that ancient seat of piety. They 
turned the church into an arsenal and fortified 
themselves upon the hill of Derry. 

Now Shane began to perceive that his new 
allies were his deadliest enemies, and that no- 
thing less was contemplated by them than the 
subjugation of his people and the ruin of the an- 
cient religion : and he resolved that Randolph 
and his troops should no longer hold the TeampoU 
More, nor profane the sacred oaks of Colum-kille. 
He led his forces to the Foyle, yet, for the pre- 
sent, neither besieged the place nor declared hos- 
tility : but a party of his men advanced to the hill, 
and by their insolence, as Cox relates, provoked 
Randolph to sally out upon them. A skirmish 
ensued in which Randolph was killed : and Derry 
became a hazardous post to hold — with the ban- 
ners of O'Neill floating over O'Cahan's country 
to the south ; O'Dogherty and Inishowen gloom- 
ing on the north ; and angry Mac Swynes and 
0*DonnelIs hemming it round on all sides. Tlife 



lilFE OF HUGH O NifilLli. ^ 

garrison, however, maintained its ground : till at 
lengtli — ^behold a miracle ! a wolf from the neigh- 
bouring woods ran to the hill of Derry, huge and 
hirsute, having in his mouth a burning torch,* 
rushed straight to the church and flung his bran^ 
amongst the powder barrels of the Saxons. 
Church and fortress, with horrible explosion, 
were shattered to pieces ; hundreds of the soldiei-y 
were blown to the elements : and so St. Colum- 
kille avenged the desecration of his sacred groves. 

Thus relate the Irish annalists : but whether 
by the miracles of the saint, or otherwise, cer- 
tainly the fortifications of Derry were dismantled, 
and the remnant of Randolph's men betook them- 
selver^ to their ships. 

On the south of O'Neill's territory also the 
English had begun to encroach ; and the vene- 
rable cathedral of Armagh was occupied by their 
troops — unfailing harbingers of the Reformation 
in Ireland. But now Shane threw off all reserve 
with these insidious allies. He could not endure 
this new garrison of Armagh. His blood waa 
up : his standard was unfurled ; and he swore by 
St. Malachy, and by the crozier of blessed Pa- 
trick, that the holy fanes of Drumsailech hill 
should be no shelter for the reforming bishop and 

* Or sparks of fire O'SulUvan. There is an obscu- 

rUy about tlie cause of the P^nglish troops cA^acuating 
Derry. The story of the skirmish in which Randolph 
was killed is given by Camden and Cox ; but O'SuUivan 
does not mention it at all. And, on the other hand, the 
iiiiracle of the wolf is an unsatisfactory account of tho 
Diatter. O'SuUivan, however, does not state it as a fact, 
6ut as the iiopular belief in his day. 



40 LIFE OF HUGH O JVEILL. 

his troops. He burst upon Armagh like a thun- 
derbolt, and laid both church and city in ashes. 

For this Loftus solemnly cursed him, and in 
Dublin pronounced sentence of excommunica- 
tion against him ;* not with bell, or book, or 
candle, (which might savour of superstition,) yet 
with sufficient unction and heartiness notwith- 
standing. But Shane was little affected by his 
cursing. "With the troops of Tyr-owen he swept 
southward like a hail-storm ravaging the settle- 
ments of the English and razing the castles of 
the Pale. He laid siege to Dundalk where he 
met a stout resistance ; and Sarsfield, mayor of 
Dublin, having marched to its relief with a large 
body of citizens, he raised the siege, and retired 
northwards, after laying waste half a province. 

The whole powers of the English government 
were now concentrated against O'Neill. Even 
the Earl of Desmond, on whom he had relied for 
support, joined with the Deputy in defence of the 
Pale. Sidney, with the usual English policy, la- 
boured to raise an Irish party against him in 
Ulster, and for that purpose supported O'Donnell 
his bitter enemy with troops and arms. The 
North was laid desolate by a furious war ; and 
although O'Neill was generally victorious in the 
field, and especially in the battle of the " Red- 
coats" {na Gassogues dearg), where four hun- 
dred of O'Donnell's English auxiliaries were cut 
to pieces ;f yet his power gradually declined. 
Mac Gwire and some Connaught chieftains whom 
hispride and ferocity had made his enemies, joined 

* Ware. t Mac Geogbegaa. 



LIFE or HUGH o'nEILL. 41 

O'Donnell against him. His territories were 
wasted by incessant attacks : bis troops, \v!io ra» 
ther feared than loved him, fled in large bodies 
ff-om his standard : and at last, abandoned by all 
his allies, and reduced nearly to extremity, he 
resolved to betake himself to his former enemies, 
the Scots of Antrim, who were then encamped 
in nortli Clan-hugh-buidhe, under Alaster Oge 
Mac Donnell. As a propitiatory offering he sent 
home in freedom the Yellow-haired Sorley, whom 
he had taken prisoner two years before ; and 
shortly after Shane himself, with his concubine, 
(the wife of O'Donnell), his secretary, and a 
poor train of but fifty horsemen, proceeded to the 
encampment of Mac Donnell. 

Here again he was met by the treachery of the 
English. An officer named Piers, an agent of 
the deputy, had been negotiating with the Scots ; 
and on the news of Shane's approach, took care 
to remind them of that pitiless raid upon the 
glynns, of the slaughter of their chief and all 
their ancient enmity to the haughty prince of 
Ulster. O'Neill arrived, and was entertained 
(vith seeming hospitality ; until some dispute, as 
previously concerted, arose between the followers 
of the two chiefs, which ended in the Mac Don- 
nells falling upon Shane and all his company and 
liewing them to pieces. The chieftain's head was 
appropriated by Piers, the contriver of this base 
slaughter, who sent it, as an acceptable offering 
to the lord deputy, " pickled in a pipkin,"* and 
received for the price of it, one thousand marks. 

That ghastly head was gibbetted high upon a 

•Cox. 



42 LIFE OF HUGH O NETLL. 

pole, and long grinned upon the towers of Dub* 
lin Castle ; a new muniment and visible sign 
of that inalienable legacy of hatred to the 
stranger bequeathed by an O'Neill two hundred 
years before ; — " Hatred produced by lengthened 
X'ecollections of injustice, by the murder of our 
fathers, brothers, and kindred ; and which will 
not be extinguished in our time nor in that of oar 
sons." The headless trunk of Shane the Proud 
was buried where it fell : and they still show his 
grave, about three miles from the little village of 
Cushendun, upon the coast of Antrim. 

English writers have painted this Shane as a 
hideous monster of sensual brutality : and strange 
tales are current of his wine cellars at Dundrum 
castle, on the coast of Down ; of his two hun- 
dred tuns of Spanish wine and hogsheads of us- 
quebaugh stored in the vaults of that fortress ; 
of his deep carouses and loathsome drunkenness ; 
and that unheard-of course of earth-bathing, 
burying himself to the ears in cold clay, to cool 
the raging fever of his blood. But it is the 
painting of an enemy. He was no stupid drunk- 
ard, who for so many years defied the armies and 
defeated the policy of Elizabeth : and his coun- 
trymen have only to lament that, by his indomi- 
table pride and cruelty, he armed so many Irisb 
chiefs against him, and against their native land j 
and further to regret that he did not import from 
Spain (instead of wines of Malaga) some thou- 
sand blades of the Toledo tempering, and Spanish 
soldiers, then the best troops in Europe, to wiel<J 
them against the deadly enemies of his race. 



J^IFE OF HUGH o'NEILL. 43 



CHAPTER in. 

TTRIiOUGH liYNNOGH AND THE *'BAE0N OP DUN- 
GANNON." 

A. D. 1567—1584. 

After the murder of Shane O'Neill, Queen 
Elizabeth and her Irish deputy believed that all 
danger from Ulster was at an end. Sidney held 
a ])arliament in that year in which the legisla- 
tors of the Pale solemnly passed an act for what 
they called the " attainder" of Shane O'Neill, and 
tlie forfeiture of his " estate," meaning all the 
lands inhabited by his sept. The act then pro- 
ceeds, after abolishing the very name of O'Neill, 
and imposing the penalties of high treason upon 
any who should dare to assume it, to grant to the 
queen all the otlier lands of northern and east- 
ern Ulster ; O'Cahan's country, now tlie county 
Derry ; the Route, the Glynns, and North Clan- 
hugh-buidhe (or Claneboy,) now composing the 
county of Antrim, but then inhabited by the 
ISIac Quillans, Mac Donnells, and O'Neills ; Mac 
Gennis' country in Down, called Iveagh ; O'Han- 
Ion's and Mac Cann's in Armagh, called Oir-thir 
(Orier) and Clan Bressail ; and also the whole of 
the present county of Monaghan, comprising 
Farney, Uriel, Lociity, and Dartry, inhabited hy 



44 LirE OF HDGH o'neil:;. 

the Mac Mahons, and Triuch of the Mac KennaB 
All these territories were gravely confiscated to 
the queen's use, — upon the map, and after a do- 
cumentary manner ; but her majesty never de- 
rived any benefit from those new dominions, 
being, indeed, kept out of them by the right 
owners. 

The truth is, the northerns never heard of 
these acts of Elizabeth's Parliament ; and never 
dreamed that the murder of an Irish chieftain 
by a traitor Scot should give any foreign power 
authority in Ulster. Tirlough Lynnogh O'Neill, 
a grandson of Con More was invested with the 
chieftaincy of Ulster, by the permission, as the 
English historians say, of the queen's govern- 
ment ; which also permitted him to hold (but, 
they assure us, by " English tenure") a portion of 
his estate ; permitted indeed more than they 
could have wished, wanting the power to pre- 
vent it. 

Sir Henry Sidney however proceeded to the 
North, not on a hostile expedition, but attended 
only by six hundred men ; and there he received 
from several chieftains what would now be called 
assurances of friendly relations, or " submissions" 
in the language of Camden and Cox ; and as the 
latter author with much gravity assures us, " set- 
tled Ulster," which, however, will appear not to 
have been finally settled at that time. 

When Shane O'Neill was murdered, the crafty 
councillors of Elizabeth seem to have fixed tiieir 
eyes upon young Hugh, son to the ill-fated Baron 
Matthew, and destined him, according to the usual 
English policy, as an instrument to v/eaken and 



UFE OF HUGH o'NEILL. 45 

divide tlie power of Ulster ; by degrees to de- 
stroy its independence ; and so to reform, it after 
their fashion,* little knowing the stuff that was 
in him : for this Hugh was then " a young man 
little set by."t 

Unhappily, we know but little of Hugh 
O'Neill's early life ; except that he lived some- 
times in Ireland, but much frequented the Eng- 
lish court ; in his own country an Irish chief, in 
London a courtly nobleman ; that he was high in 
favour with Elizabeth, being a youth of goodly 
presence and winning speech ; that he was not 
very tall in stature, but powerfully made, able to 
endure much labour, watching, and hunger ; that 
*' his industry was great, his soul large, and fit 
for the weightiest businesses ;" — that he " had 
much knowledge in military affairs, and a pro- 
found dissembling heart ; so as many deemed him 
born either for the great good or ill of his coun- 

try."t 

This man was deemed a suitable instrument ol 
English politicians to ruin his country's liberty ; 
and with that view was recognized by the queen 
as Baron of Dungannon *' by his father's right,*' 
and was supported as a rival to Tirlough, then 
the O'Neill ; for thus it was expected that the 
Irish chieftain and the Saxon baron would de- 
stroy each other, and that the great house of Ty- 
rone, divided against itself, would fall. Hugh 



* For a candid explanation of this scheme see 
eer's View," p. 180. 
t Camden, Quee i Eliz. 
tib. 



46 LIFE OF HUGH o'NEII.L. 

O'Neill knew well the purport and meanine: of 
all these honours : he understood what the golden 
chain of an English noble symbolized, when worn 
round the neck of a Celtic chieftain : he felt that 
in those stars and ribbons there lurked danger to 
his country, ignominy to himself. But he had 
much to learn amongst the English : he had their 
mode of warfare to master, their policy to study, 
in the characters of Burleigh and Walsingham, 
intending, apparently, to try conclusions with 
them in both those departments at a future day. 
So with that " profound dissembling heart" of 
his, he stomached their disgraceful dignities ; nay, 
bore himself proudly imder them, biding his 
time. 

Nearly twenty years passed away, from the 
death of Shane till 1584, when Perrot came to 
Ireland as lord deputy ; during which Ulster was 
comparatively quiet, though as thoroughly unre- 
formed, and anti-English as ever. The sacrile- 
gious outrages by which the foreigners and their 
bishops prosecuted reformation in the south, (and 
which provoked tlie Geraldine war there) were 
still unknown in the CyNeill's country. Abbey 
lands and monasteries were peaceably possessed 
by their religious inhabitants ; and three northern 
bishoprics, those of Clogher, Derry, and Raphoe, 
seem to have been abandoned altogether to Ca- 
iholic' prelates ; so that as Doctor Leland, la- 
menting the circumstance, observes, " they were 
still granted by the pope without control." Not 
that the pope did not also appoint bishops, as 



LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 47 

nsual, to the other sees ; but for some of those 
there were also nominal bishops (without clergy 
or flocks), named by letters patent from the 
queen. 

During this period also the civil policy of the 
North remained unchanged ; there was not a 
sheriff north of Dundalk. No " lord president* 
had yet ventured into these regions to govern 
with his " course of discretion," as Sir John Da- 
vies terms their method of administering justice 
Hugh O'Neill, when in Ireland, seems to have re- 
sided quietly at his house of Dungannon, and to 
have acquiesced, contrary to all expectation, io 
the chieftaincy of old Tirlough, who held his 
state principally in Strabane or Benburb. And 
so long as the frontiers of the Pale were not ad- 
vanced northwards, neither chiefs nor people 
concerned themselves about the affairs of other 
parts of the island : for, alas ! there was still no 
Irish nation. 

Several transactions, however, occurred in 
Ulster, during this period, which deserve some 
notice. In Queen Elizabeth's reign foreign plan- 
tations began to be a favourite project with the 
English. Large tracts of North America were 
by those all-powerful " letters patent" taken from 
the red men and deliberately given and granted 
to such of her discontented and adventurous sub- 
jects as would undertake to form settlements 
there and establish true religion : and Ulster, 
which had been so solemnly declared forfeit to the 
queen seemed a very suitable theatre for similar 
plantations. Accordingly one Thomas Smith, a 
secretary to Elizabeth, havin£c a natural son te 



48 ^I^E OF HDr;\f ONEILL. 

pi u vide for, whose illegitimacy was a bar to his 
attaining distinction in his own country, desired 
to make him the founder of a noble family in Ire- 
land. He moved the queen, therefore, to grant this 
young adventurer a territory in the Ards, on the 
east coast of Down, for the purpose, as Camden 
assures us, of civilizing and converting the bar- 
barous inhabitants. And as it had always been 
found that the Irish could not be civilized or 
converted, until they had first been largely plun- 
dered, every foot soldier who should accompany 
Smith, was to take for his own share, one hundred 
and twenty acres of land, every horseman two 
hundred and forty acres, and all other persons ac- 
cording to their rank, paying Smith, as Lord of 
Ards, one penny per acre. But Brian Mac Art 
O'Neill, and his clansmen, to whom all that land 
belonged, had not been consulted in these ar- 
rangements, and apparently were not desirous of 
such civilization as this foreign pirate had to 
offer: for when Smith landed, (1571,) and was 
proceeding to establish himself in the Ards, 
O'Neill and his people fell upon them by surprise, 
(by treachery, some historians say, as if the 
O'Neills were his natural and sworn allies.) and 
killed Smith and many of his troops ; the rest fled 
to their ships and speedily weighed anchor, carry- 
ing their letters patent and their civilization to 
some more hospitable shore. 

Shortly after, in the year 1573, Walter Deve- 
reux, earl of Essex, projected a mure extensive 
plantation in the same district. Twelve hundred 
troops were to be maintained and fortification 
built at the joint expenss of the queen and 



lATR OF HUGH O'NEILL. 45 

Essex ; and, this time, each horseman was to 
have four hundred acres, and each footman two 
hundred. A few scores of acres, more or less, o{ 
the Irish enemies' land seemed to have been 
reckoned of small account. Essex raised £10,000 
(equal to £100,000 of the present monej) by 
mortgaging his English estate to the queen; 
made vast preparations in men, arms, and stores ; 
and so hopeful was the expedition held, that Lord 
Rich, Lord Dacre, Sir Henry Knowles, three 
sons of Lord Norris, and several other English- 
men of distinction, accompanied him to have a 
share of the glory and the profit. The armament 
set sail and arrived in the bay of Carrickfergus. 

So formidable an invasion seems to have caused 
for the time a close union amongst the several 
chieftains of the name of O'Neill. Brien, lord of 
Clan-hugh-buidhe, whose territories were the im- 
mediate objects of this marauding expedition, 
was speedily joined both by Tirlough Lynnogh, 
and Hugh of Dungannon, who was then in this 
country, and seems, notwithstanding his English 
peerage and high favour with the queen, to 
have been strongly of opinion that Ireland was 
for the Irish. Several skirmishes occurred be- 
tween the O'Neills and the troops of Essex. The 
new colony began to promise more hard fighting 
than either profit or Protestantism ; and the Eng- 
lish noblemen who shared the adventure, one by 
one, withdrew to England. At last the earl pe- 
titioned the queen for liberty to abandon tlie 
plantation and return home, which was not how- 
ver granted him for more than a year : and the 
only further proceeding we hear of in connexion 



60 LIFE O? HUGH O'NEILL. 

with the affair is ths^t, in 1574, "a solemn peace 
and concord was made between the earl of Essex 
and Felim O'Neill. However, at a feast wherein 
the earl entertained that chieftain, and at the end 
of their good cheer, O'Neill and his wife were 
seized ; their friends who attended were put tc 
the sword before their faces, and Felim, togethej 
with his wife and brother, was conveyed to Dub- 
Hi, where they were cut up in quarters."* 

Even this expedient, however, did not secure 
Essex in his settlement. The Irish of that coun- 
try would not be civilized notwithstanding all his 
exertions, and never could see the justice or ex- 
pediency of allotting their lands to English sol*- 
diers. The troops were slain or scattered ; the 
money was lost ; and at length the earl got per- 
mission to return to England. 

But the Geraldine war had now broken out io 
Munster, and Hugh of Dungannon must be fol 
lowed to the South. 

* Irish M S. Annals, quoted by Leland and Curry. 



LIFE OF HLUB o'NEILL. 51 



CHAPTEK IV. 

THE OERALDINES AND REFORMATION IN THE 
SOUTH. 

1570— IST'i. 

As tlie wars in Munster were solely on account 
of religion, it is needful to keep sight of the " Re- 
formation." In the year 1575, a very singular 
letter was addressed to the Queen of England by 
Sir Henry Sidney, then lord deputy, in whicn 
the writer undertakes an exposition of the state 
of his province in matters ecclesiastical.* He 
takes as an example the diocese of Meath, *' the 
best peopled diocese, and best governed country," 
he calls it, of this realm, of which the queen's 
bishop at that time was one Brady. Sir Henry 
says there were in that diocese two hundred and 
twenty-four parish churches, of which one hun- 
dred and five were served by " very simple and 
sorry curates," and of these curates only eighteen 
were found able to speak English, "the rest 
Irish priests, or rather," as he prefers to call 
them, " Irish rogues." In many places the very 
walls of the churches were down, "very few 
chancels covered, windows and doors ruined." 
And if such be the estate of the church in Meath 

• Sir. H. Sidney's Letters and Memorials. 



5^ LlKF OF HI ion O'NETI-Ti. 

diocese Sidney leaves her Majesty to conjecture 
in what case the rest is. *' Yea, so profane and 
heathenish," he continues, " are some parts of this 
your country become, as it hath been preached 
publicly before me, that the sacrament of baptism 
is not used among them ; and truly I believe it.** 
Spenser's account of the state of religion is still 
more dismal ; the clergy, " generally bad" — '* the 
churches even with the ground" — the bishopa 
keeping the benefices in their own hands and 
" setting up their own servants and horseboys to 
take up the tithes and fruits of them." In all 
the world had not been seen " such an overthrown 
church." " The kingdom in general," says Dr. 
Mant, "was at this time overwhelmed by the 
most deplorable immorality and irreligion." State- 
ments these which to those unacquainted with 
the peculiar phraseology of the writers might con- 
vey an impression of hideous national crime. But 
" religion" and " the church" meant, with them, 
only the Protestant religion and the queen's 
clergy. The universal Catholicism of the people 
was accounted only as so much irreligion ; for 
the same Spenser informs us that the popish 
priests, " lurking secretly in the houses and in 
corners of the country doe more hurt and hiw 
drance to religion with their private persuasion& 
than all the others can do good with their publique 
instructions." And he much marvels at the zeal 
yf these priests, which he says " it is a great 
wonder to see ;" " how they spare not to come out 
of Spaine, from Rome and from Remes, by long 
toyle and daungerous travayiing hither, whf»Te ' 
t/iey know perill of death awaytc th them^ and 



LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILL. 53 

reward or richesse." Dr. Leland, winle he de- 
plores the glooniy prospect, as he calls it, admits 
that " where the reformed clergy could neither 
he regarded nor understood, the priests spoke to 
their countrymen and kinsmen in their own lan- 
guage, and were heard with attention, favour and 
afi-ection." And Doctor Mant, after lamenting 
the general " irreligion" admits, as it were inci- 
dentally, that " It is true there existed in the 
kingdom other intrusive missionaries sent by the 
bishop of Rome, as opponents of the sovereign, the 
laws, and the church of the kingdom." 

The overthrow of church buildings mentioned 
by Sidney and Spenser, maybe accounted for by 
their being generally turned into fortresses by 
the queen's troops ; " for in the churches dedi- 
cated to the saints it was most usual with them 
to reside," says an Irish chronicler.* And as the 
Irish loved no strong places upon their borders, 
they made no scruple, when occasion served, of 
burning and destroying them like the other cas- 
tles of the English. We have seen how the ca- 
thedrals of Derry and Armagh fared in the wars 
of Shane O'Neill ; and about the same periodf 
the church of Athenry, in Galway, was laid in 
ashes by the Mac-an-Earlas, sons of the Earl of 
Clanrickard ; and when men cried out sacrilege 
and parricide, for their mother lay buried there, 
one of them fiercely answered, " If his mother 
were alive in the church he would sooner burn 



• MS. translation of Life of O'Donnell in U.I.A. p. 51. 
t 1576. 



54 LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

her and it together than any English should fortify 
there." 

On the whole we may collect that little or no 
progress had yet been made in reducing the Irish 
people under the Queen of England's jurisdiction^ 
either tempoi-al or spiritual. The peerages created 
hy King Henry had begun to be regarded in their 
true light as badges of servitude, and despised 
accordingly. Thomond, like Tyrone, could en- 
dure no earldoms within its bounds, and on the 
death of the first earl of that title, had compelled his 
successor to nominate a Tanist after the manner 
of his fathers, and to comport himself in all re- 
i^pects like an Irish prince. Some years later 
Mac Carthy-More flung to the winds his coronet 
of Clancarthy,* assumed the title of King of 
Munster, and " invaded the Lord Roche's coun- 
try with banners displayed" as an Eugenian chie^ 
tain ought. 

But the great Anglo-Irish family of Fitzgerald 
were the most powerful antagonists of English 
authority in Munster. Gerald, the head of that 
tribe, (and by his English title. Earl of Des- 
mond,) was then the most potent chieftain of the 
south ; had a vast following, royal privileges, 
many fair castles and wide domains ; and through 
his palatinate of Kerry, and from the Shannon 
to the Blackwater, from Carrig-a-foyle to his 
good town of Kilmallock, and eastward to 
Toughal, the Geraldine administered justice, 
levied war, and held his state like a sovereign 
prince as he was. His attachment to the undent 

*" Cox. This writer calls the title Glanear 



jLIFE of HUGH O'NEILL. 55 

religion caused him to be looked to as the cham- 
pion of the Catholic cause in the south. The 
earl and his countess had received, with distinc- 
tion, Leverous, bishop of Kildare, when deprived 
of his see for refusing the oath of supremacy; 
and in defiance of the statutes against harbouring 
priests and friars, gave an asylum to all such as 
were persecuted under the atrocious penal laws 
of the Pale. 

It was evident to the councillors of Elizabeth 
that until this chief could be reduced, reformation 
and English law would make small way in Mun- 
ster ; and, therefore, in the year 1567, while Des- 
mond and his brother John were at the court of 
England upon a peaceful visit, they were both 
seized by order of the queen, and committed pri- 
soners to the Tower. 

Now it was hoped that some progress could be 
made. Sidney procured the appointment, succes- 
sively, of Sir John Perrot and Sir Wm. Drury 
to the office of *' Lord President" of Munster, a 
functionary whose duty seems to have been to 
excite feuds amongst the native princes, and so 
strengthen the influence, and, as far as possible, 
establish the rule and religion of England upon 
their ruin. And wherever local dissension or 
treachery atforded any opportunity of exercising 
authority, they proceeded to hold a kind of courts, 
and make the unfortunate Irish amenable to tlie 
laws enacted in the Pale Parliament. Sir John 
Davies explains the functions of these lords pre- 
sident in the case of Fitton then holding that 
office in Connaught, who governed, he says, " in 



66 LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

a course of discretion," partly martial and partly 
civil ; in short, as best he might. 

Perrot and Drury, but especially the latter, car- 
ried this course of discretion to a terrible length 
in Munster. The Act of Uniformity and that 
against harbouring Catholic priests, were strictly 
enforced wherever these justiciaries could esta- 
blish their power ; and, unhappily, the south was 
so torn by the wars of native chiefs, that the 
English officers, though not supported by large 
military force, were enabled to usurp much autho- 
rity. Thus, in an expedition made by Drury, in 
1578, he bound forty citizens of Kilkenny, in a 
kind of recognizance, to come to church every 
Sunday and hear service in English ; (for a re- 
formed bishop had at length established himself 
in St. Canice's ;) and during the same circuit 
" he executed twenty-tv/o criminals at Limerick, 
and thirty-six at Kilkenny, one of which was a 
blackamoor, and two others were witches ; who 
were condemned," says Cox, " by the law of na- 
ture."* What were the offences of the other 
culprits, or by what law they were condemned, 
we are not apprized ; but they had probably three 
times asserted the spiritual supremacy of the 
pope. 

In the same year we find a notable instance of 
the abhorrence in which the reformers held all 
" superstition," and how they proceeded in abating 

• Witchcraft and conjurations of evil spirits had so 
much increased about this time that the queen's govern- 
ment, amongst other acts for reforming Ireland, waa 
obliged shortly after to procure a special law fcgamst 
those crimes, (the 2Sth Eiiz. c. 2. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILJL. 57 

it. Matthew Sheyn, queen's bishop of Cork and 
Cloyne, publiclj burned at the high cross of 
Cork the image of St. Dominick belonging to 
the Dominican friary of that city.* 

And now we might sup full of horrors, with 
Ihe ecclesiastical historians of the period, in de- 
railing the cruel persecutions and painful deaths 
of the national clergy, wherever the unsparing 
arm of that ferocious English Reformation could 
reach them ; — how Patrick O'Hely, bishop of 
Mayo, and Cornelius O'Rourke, a pious priest, 
were, by order of Drury, placed on the rack, 
their hands and feet broken with hammers, nee- 
dles thrust under their nails ; how they were at 
last hanged : — how Dermod O'Hurley, archbishop 
of Cashel, was arrested by order of Adam Lof- 
tus (then Chancellor of the Pale, and Queen's 
Archbishop of Dublin, Armagh having proved 
tjDo hot for him, as we saw) ; how he was loaded 
with irons until the Holy Thursday of the fol- 
lowing year, dragged before the chancellor and 
treasurer, questioned, tortured, and finally hanged 
outside the city walls before break of day : — how 
John Stephens, a priest, having been duly con- 
victed " for that he said mass to Teague Mac 
Hugh," was hanged and quartered. All this and 
much more may be found in the martyrologists 
of the time.j" But what is material for us to re- 

• "Ware. Bishops of Cork and Cloyne. 

t O'Sullivan. Hist. Cath O'Daly. Ralatiopersecxtt. 

Hihern Arthur-a-monasterio, ( quoted in Brenan's Eccl. 

Hist, of Ireland.) Theatre of CathoUc and Protestant 
Religion, &c. 



68 LIFE OP HUGH 0*NE1LL. 

mark is, the fact that such methods of couversion 
were then the only known methods ; — that this 
island had now become one of the battle-grounds 
on which Europe in those centuries fought out 
the cruel quarrel of her rival idivhs ; — that Philip 
of Spain was at this very moment striving to 
crush liberty and Protestantism in the Low Coun- 
tries, almost as fiercely as another foreign tyrant 
was warring against liberty and Catholicism in 
Ireland ; — that, a few years before, in the streets 
of Paris, was done that deed of horror Avhich 
makes St. Bartholomew's a day that mankind, 
while the earth stands, will tremble to name ;— 
that hideous rumours of intended extermination, 
— Catholics to be massacred by Protestants, Pro- 
testants by Catholics, — affrighted the general ear 
of Christendom — and, further, that Pope Pius 
the Fifth had lately, by a solemn bull, deposed 
the Queen of England from her throne, and ab- 
solved her subjects, as far as a bull could, from 
their allegiance , which, indeed, he had precisely 
as good a right to do as she to deprive him of his 
spiritual supremacy. 

This confounding of spiritual and temporal 
authority, upon both sides, led to all those terri- 
ble persecutions and " religious wars," as they 
were called, whioh devastated £urope for more 
than a century. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILL. 59 



CHAPTER V. 

THE GEBALDINE WAR, 

A. D. 1578 -1584. 

After some years' confinement in the tower, 
Gerald, Earl of Desmond, and his brother were 
sent as state prisoners to Dublin ; from whence, in 
1574, they had found an opportunity to escape 
onhorseback during a hunting party, and by 
desperate riding arrived in Munster, whither it 
did not seem advisable to follow them. For about 
fonr years after this Desmond seems to have lived 
in peace with the English; yet still, as Ware al- 
leges, was keeping up negotiations with the pope 
and King of Spain, but without much result, un- 
til at last James Eitzmaurice, his kinsman, pro- 
ceeded to Rome, and through the celebrated 
ecclesiastics, Saunders and Allen, solicited and 
obtained from his Holiness a bull commanding the 
chiefs and clergy of Ireland to assist Eitzmaurice 
in defence of holy church against the heretic 
Enghsh, with promise of indulgences and spiri- 
tual privih^ges, such as the Crusaders hud earned 
by fighting for the blessed sepulchre. 

Thus accredited, Eitzmaurice proceeded to 
Spain and entreated King Philip, the mortal 



QQ LIFE OF HUGH O'NEIL-I- 

enemy of England, to supply men and arms for 
tlie war. In Spain also he expected to be joined 
b} Stukely, an English adventurer, who had 
shortly before obtained six hundred Italians from 
the pope for the invasion of Ireland, and had 
proceeded as far as Cadiz on his way. A strange 
career had this Thomas Stukely, and his story is 
characteristic of the time. It was of course from 
no patriotic motive that he sought to levy war in 
Ireland, where his antagonists were to be his own 
countrymen ; — nor yet from religious zeal ; for he 
was, in truth, an undertaker, and was setting 
forth under the pope's authority, as Essex had 
come under Elizabeth's, to seek his fortune and 
make a plantation in Ireland — poor Ireland ! that 
hunting-field for all the hungry adventurers of 
the earth. Essex and Smith had bound them- 
selves, as we saw, to establish the queen's religion 
in their settlements : Stukely, as deriving under 
the pope, was to uphold Catholicity. Elizabeth 
had entitled those adventurers Lords of Ards ; 
and his Holiness duly created his missionary 
(whether by letters patent or papal rescript does 
not appear) Marquis of Leinster, Earl of Wex- 
ford and Carlow, Viscount Murrough and Baron 
of Ross. When he and his six hundred arrived 
at Cadiz, i* happened that Dom Sabastian of 
Portugal was collecting all his powers for a dc" 
scent upon Africa, to reinstate King Mohammed 
on the throne of Fez, and also to found for him- 
6elf a Portuguese empire upon that continent. 
Stukely was dazzled by the splendour of this 
African undertaking ; and when Sebastian prof 



LIFE OP HUGH O'NEILL. 6 1 

ferred him a share in the enterprize he speedily 
exchanged his Irish earldom for a principality on 
the Mediterranean ; — perhaps was created Duke 
of Barbary or Prince of Mauritania — and led 
his freebooters to the Moorish war. A true ad- 
venturer this — a genuine kniglit-errant of that 
age, not vowed to God or ladye-love, but to 
Mammon and Moloch. This poor Stukely indeed 
never came into the enjoyment of those vast es- 
tates and honours of his, whether in Africa or 
in Ireland. Neither was the Mauro-Lusitanian 
empire ever founded, nor King Mohammed rein- 
throned ; for, on the bloody field of Alca9ar- 
quivir, swift destruction overtook them all. There 
fell three crowned kings, ending quarrel and life 
together, and with them died this most singulai 
Marquis of Leinster and Baron of Ross. 

So when Fitzmaurice reached Spain he found 
that Stukely had turned his face southward, and 
abandoned the cause of Ireland : but for him 
those Moorish kingdoms had no attraction. Not 
the vales of Atlas, nor the Atlantic island itself 
could draw him aside. Northward lay the shores 
of Munster, where, perhaps, even now the ad- 
herents of the Geraldine were hard pressed by 
those accursed English, and from the capes of 
Desmond were gazing wistfully over the sea, 
pining for the Spanish ships. At last three small 
vessels cnst anchor in Smerwick bay, carrying 
Fitzmaurice and a poor band of eighty Spaniards, 
accompanied by Allen and Saunders, and bearing 
a consecrated papal banner, in the sure hope that, 
if not for love of liberty and old Ireland, yet for 
tliG sake of religion and to save their souls alive, 



6*J U.FE OF HUGH O'NEILA,. 

the Irish tribes would forget their feuds, and 
unite against the common foe. 

And now it is heart-breaking to read how 
IX)or Fitzmaurice and his Spaniards were re- 
ceived. Desmond's two brothers indeed joined 
him at once ; but the earl himself, with some 
views of crafty policy which one finds difficulty 
in understanding, long held aloof, and even at 
first pretended to obey the summons of Drury 
the English president, and raised his troops to 
resist the invaders. Time was wasted, and the 
Spaniards were sickened by their cold reception. 
In vain the gallant Fitzmaurice traversed Lime- 
rick, sent messengers to Connaught and the Scots, 
and made a pilgrimage to Holy- Cross in Tippe- 
rary, not to perform his vows alone, but to meet 
the emissaries of the Leinster chieftains. Before 
a blow was struck against the English, Fitzmau- 
rice fell in a quarrel with one of the Burkes of 
Castleconnell, and John of Desmond took tho 
command in his place. 

Some obscurity rests upon the events of that 
desultory war which followed the first Spanish 
landing — English historians asserting that John 
of Desmond was signally defeated by Malby at 
Monaster-neva, and that Dr. Allen was amongst 
the slain* — 0' Sullivan and O'Dalyf that the Ge- 
raldines were victorious, not only there, bui 
shortly after at Atharlam and Gort-na-pissi. On 
the whole, there appears to have been nothiiig 
very decisive done upon either side until the fol 

* Camden. Queen Eliz. 

t O'Daly is cited by tae Abb^ Mac Geoglifgar, 



LIFE OF HIjGH O'NEILIi. 63 

lowing year, when the Earl of Desmond seeing 
his lands laid waste, and himself proclaimed a 
traitor by the English, at last raised his stan- 
dard and openly joined in the war. The earl 
wrote to Pelham, the Lord Deputy, announcing 
that he was in arms for the Catholic religion ; 
sent messengers to Fiach Mac Hugh, chief of the 
O'Byrnes of Wicklow, and Eustace, Lord Bal- 
tinglass, that they might lay waste the neigh- 
bourhood of Dublin, and keep the forces of the 
Pale employed ; while Desmond himself marched 
suddenly against Youghal, which he took by es- 
calade, plundered, and garrisoned. 

In the meantime the Earl of Ormond and the 
English generals, Malby and Pelham, were was- 
ting and plundering the county of Limerick : 
and indeed on their part the war was entirely 
carried on by destroying the cattle and growing 
crops of the country, and reducing Desmond's 
castles of Carrig-a-foyle, Askeaton, Ballyloghan, 
and Castlemaine. There was no pitched-battle, 
" so that in all that warre there perished not 
many by the sword, but all by the extremity of 
famine."* The cruellest warfare ever waged by 
man ; until the whole territories of Desmond lay 
a smoking desert where neither man nor beast 
could live. The Catholic clergy who had been 
the principal cause of the war were pursued with 
unusual fury ; and eight hundred Spaniards who 
landed at Smerwick in September 1680 were in- 
stantly besieged there by Ormond, and shortly 
after invested closely both by sea and land, uutii 

* Si)enser's Viniv 



64 LIFE OV HUGH O^NEILL. 

they surrendered at discretion ;* and were all in 
cold blood massacred by order of Lord Grey. 

The most powerful opponent of Desmond was 
his hereditary enemy the Earl of Ormond, who 
was assisted also by the Lord Roche and othel 
Anglo-Irish lords, and, rather unaccountably, by 
Hugh O'Neill of Dungannon, who commanded a 
body of ca^ airy for the queen. One would pre- 
fer to find this Hugh on the other side ; but it 
seems that the nationality of an O'Neill did not 
yet extend beyond Ulster, at which we can won- 
der the less when we read that in the southern 
war the greater portion of the Irish race was on 
the side of Elizabeth and at feud with the Ge- 
raldines. Hugh was content to keep the English 
at a distance from his own territories, and had 
not probably at that period conceived the grand 
design of uniting all Ireland against the stranger. 
Of his achievements in the South we have no 
particular record, save that he behaved himself 
right valiantly, as we can well suppose ; and fur- 
ther that he gained the good-will of his ally the 
Earl of Ormond, for it was one of the gifts of 
Hugh O'Neill that he irresistibly attracted to 
himself the hearts of all men, and all women also, 
whose love he desired to win. 

Two other very notable men appear in the 
ranks of the English, in that Munster war. One 
is Walter Raleigh, afterwards Sir Walter ; then 
one of the most active of Irish undertakers ; des- 
tined to be a planter in Virginia, to be an under- 

• The Irish historians ?ay they capitulated on sworn 
articlea ; but Spenser elaborately controverts this. 



LTPE OP HTTGH O'lJEILIi. 65 

taker in El Dorado; to wander wide over earth 
and sea, fighting the Spaniard, chasing x^late 
fleets, navigating the Orinoco: — and alas! des- 
tined also to dree his weary thirteen years in the 
dungeons of London, and write a " History of 
the World" there, and at last to lay his gray head 
upon the block, and so end the career of the 
wildest and most brilliant adventurer of that ad- 
venturous age 

And the other is Edmund Spenser, a man well 
known to Gloriana and all the realm of Faerie. 
He came over in the train of Lord Grey of Wil- 
ton,* saw the horrible ending of the Geraldine 
war, and had his share of the spoils. Kilcolman 
castle and its fair domains fell to the poet under- 
taker; and there, "under the foot of Mole, that 
mountainhoar/' dwelling contentedly in another 
man's house — sitting in quietness under another 
man's vine and fig-tree, within view of the smok- 
ing ruins of tower and town and the unburied 
skeletons of a famished nation, he began inditing 
that solemn and tender strain, the intent of which 
he has informed us is "to fashion a gentleman 
or noble person in vertuous and gentle disci- 
pline," — nay, he drew inspiration from the hi- 
deous Golgotha that lay around him; and when hia 
Merlin tells of the ravage to be made by king 
Gormonde,t he has only to describe what the 
poet saw with his mere bodily eye in the vales of 
Munster: 

*' He in his furie all shall over-ronne, 

And holy church with faithless hands deface. 



1580. t "Faerie Queene," B. 3, c. 3. 



66 LIFE or HUGH o'neill. 

That thy sad people, utterly fordonne, 
Shall to the utmost mountains fly apace: 
Was never so great waste in any place, 
Nor so fowle outrage doen by living men ; 
For all thy citties they shall sack and rase, 
And the greene graese that groweth they shall bren. 
That even the wilde beast shall dy in starved den "* 

From Kilcolman also the poet took that most as- 
tonishing " View of the State of Ireland," of 
which Tve shall see more hereafter ; — a most 
practical view, — the view not of a bard but of an 
undertaker, whereby we find, that however his 
imagination may have bled for enchanted damo- 
gels or elfin knights, suffering sentimental woes, 
the heart of him, in dealing with mere living 
wights, was harder than the nether millstone. 

At last all the Munster and Leinster Irish 
were broken and reduced, except the redoubtable 
Fiach Mac Hugh of Wicklow ; and during all 
this long and inglorious war the only day of 
which one can speak with pleasure, is the day of 
Glendalough. Immediately on Lord Grey's ar- 
rival in Dublin — it was the summer of 1580 — he 
led a large force of horse and foot into the moun- 
tains, fully resolved to grapple with the fierce 
O'Byrne in his own strongholds, and crush that 
gallant sept for ever. When the army arrived 
at the entrance of the valley, the cavalry under 
command of Grey himself scoured the open 

• " The very wolves, the foxes, and other like ravening 
beasts, many of them lay dead, being famished." — Holin- 
Bhed. See also Spenser's own horrible picture of this 



UFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 67 

ground while the foot were ordered to advance 
into the glen. The O'B jrnes allowed them to 
proceed into the silent recesses of the mountain, 
wondering that they found no enemj, — and then 
suddenly shoutivig their battle-cry, rushed from 
all sides upon the sagums dearg, and hewed 
them to pieces till their arms were weary with 
slaying. Grey and his horsemen could give no 
assistance, and had to retreat much more rapidly 
than they had advanced, leaving in that fatal glen 
eight hundred slain, and amongst them Sir Peter 
Carew, Colonel Moore, and Captains Audley and 
Cosby. Never, since black Monday at Cullens- 
ivood, had the sword of the CuUane mountaineer 
drank so deep of the stranger's blood. 

But this was of no service to the luckless Des- 
mond. He was hard pressed by his mortal ene- 
mies the Butlers. His Spanish auxiliaries were 
cut off, and the coast blockaded by Admiral Win- 
ter with the English cruisers. Most of the Mun- 
ster lords were either weary of the war or in the 
ranks of England. His countiy was a howling 
wilderness, — himself an aged and homeless fugi- 
tive, and at last in a wood near Tralee, he fell by 
the hand of a common soldier, and his head was 
sent to the Queen of England, who caused it to 
be impaled in the usual manner upon London 
bridge. 

Thus fell the great Earl of Desmond ; and 
thus the fairest province of this island, wasted 
and destroyed by the insane warfare of the Irish 
themselves, lay ready for the introduction of the 
foreigner's law, civilization and religion ; or, as 
Doctor Leland has it, *' for effectually regulating 



OB TulTB OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

and modelling this country upon the principles of 
justice and liberal policy."* And accordingly a 
parliament was soon held for the purpose of vest- 
ing in the Queen of England all the lands which 
had been inhabited by the kinsmen and adherents 
of Desmond. Letters were written to everj 
county in England offering estates in fee to all 
** younger brothers" who would undertake the 
plantation of Munster ; each undertaker to pla ni 
so many families ; but " none of the native Irish 
to be admitted."! No specific mode of disposing 
of these poor native Irish seems to have been 
pointed out in any official document ; but how 
the thing was done we know — they were sim- 
ply starved to death ; and the end was attained 
more speedily than poet Spenser tells us he could 
even have hoped. " The end will (I assure me) 
be very short, and much sooner than can be hoped 
for ; although there should none of them fall by 
the sword, nor be slaine by the souldiours, yet thus 
being kept from manurance, and their cattle from 
running abroad, by this hard restraint they would 
quickly consume themselves and devoure one ano- 
ther."! And so " in a short space there were 
none almost left, and a most populous and plenti- 
fuU countrey suddainly left voyde of man and beast." 
And starvation being in some instances too slow, 
crowds of men, women, and children were some* 
times driven into buildings which were then set 
on fire. The soldiers were specially careful to 

• Leland's History, vol. 2, p. 291. 

+ MS. in Trin. Coll. cited by Leland. 

% Spenser's View, p. 16(3. ' 



LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL 69 

destroy all Irish infants — " for if they were suf- 
fered to grow up, they would become popish re* 
bels." "^omen were found hanging upon trees, 
with their children strangled in the mother's 

hair/'* 

But we turn from those fields of blood, and 
come back to the North. 

** LoiDbtrd, Conuuent. de Hiberu. ap. Cuny. 



TO LIFE OF HUGH o'nEIUm 



CHAPTER Vl. 

BEGINNING OF THE ULSTER CONTEDERACy. 

A. D. 1584—1590. 

The Antrim Scots had grown numerous and 
powerful during the Geraldine war. New bands 
of lelesmen had arrived from the Hebrides ; and 
Tirlough of Tyr-owen being old and weak, and 
Baron Hugh absent in the South, there seemed 
some danger that Ulster would fall under their 
power. This ill suited the views of Hugh 
O Neill, who had designs of his own in that re- 
gard ; and accordingly in this year, 1584, we find 
there was a powerful expedition to the North. 
Sir John Perrot, Hugh O'Neill, and his friend, 
the Earl of Ormond, with all the forces of the 
Pale, marched to Newry, separated their forces 
there, and prepared to attack the Scots both in 
Claneboy and Tyr-owen. Some English ships 
were sent round to Lough Foyle to intercept the 
communication with the isles ; while Perrot and 
Ormond marched northward by the right shore of 
Lough Neagh and tlje Bann, and O'Neill and 
Norris on the left, driving the Scots before them 
and plundering their Irish allies. The O'Cahans 
of Arachty, (or, as it is now called, the " county 
of Londonderry,") were in league with the Scots ; 



liIPE OF HUGH o'nEILI.. 71 

and from them Norris drove a prey of two hun- 
dred head of cattle. Dunluce Castle was be* 
sieged by Perrot and taken ; and at last the Scots 
were forced to fly to the woods of Glancom- 
keane ;* and their leader, Sorley buidhe Mac 
Oonnell, surrendered and gave hostages to the 
deputy. The troops then marched to Newry, 
where Sir Henry Bagnal resided ; and here the 
deputy received "submissions" from several chiefs 
of Down and Armagh. 

Hitherto Hugh O'Neill seemed to have an- 
swered the expectations of the English court in 
promoting their designs against the liberty of 
Ireland. Ulster seemed about to yield its inde- 
pendence without even a struggle : and so well 
assured was Perrot of the submission of the 
North, that he forthwith divided the whole coun 
try west of the Bann into seven new counties, 
Armagh, Monaghan, Tyr-owen, Coleraine, Done- 
gal, Fermanagh, and Cavan, for each of which 
the English historians assure us " he appointed 
sheriffs, commissioners of the peace, coroners, 
and other necessary officers ;" an arrangement 
most satisfactory to the deputy and his employ- 
ers, if, indeed, it existed anywhere else than in 
state papers, — a matter which needs some in- 
quiry. 

The truth then is, that in all these proceedings 
Hugh O'Neill, while he seemed to be an instru 

• This was an extensive forest on the north-west cor 
ner of Lough Neagh, in Arachty O'Cahan. Moryson, 
with his usual inaccuracy, says it was a fastness neat 
Lough Erne. It is correctly laid down in the map ac- 
companying the Pacata Hihernia 



72 LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

ment in the hands of Perrot for reducing the 
North under foreign subjection, was, in fact, 
making use of the deputy and the forces of Eliza- 
beth to establish his own power there. By the 
aid of Perrot he humbled the Scots of Antrim 
(who had begun to rival the house of O'Neill,) 
and, in return, permitted that officer to imagine 
that he was making " shire-ground" of Ulster, 
although for a long time after this no agent of 
the queen dared to enter the borders of those 
seven counties or challenge jurisdiction there. 
Those sheriffs and coroners, like the queen's 
northern bishops, were merely titular ; and Sir 
John Davies expressly informs us that in Perrot's 
time " the law was never executed in these new 
counties by any sheriffs or justices of assize, but 
the people left to be ruled by their own barba- 
rous lords and laws,"* — pronouncing those laws 
" barbarous," as for an attorney-general of the 
Pale it was altogether professional to do. 

And so long as the queen and her deputies ex 
ercised no power in Ulster, O'Neill's policy was 
(not like that wild Shane) to acquiesce most 
courtier-like in the nominal supremacy arrogated 
by the English monarch ; — a crafty policy, which 
the present writer is called upon only to state, 
not to defend by logics and ethics ; yet it is well 
to recollect, who were the men with whom he had 
to do,— for what base uses they had treacherously 
destined him, — what a cruel game they were 
playing with him and with his country. 

For two years, we have little record of O'Neill's 

"Duscovery of the True Cause," ^c, p. 191. 



LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 73 

life ; but he was silently strengthening himself 
in the North, and gaining the hearts of the clans- 
men of Tyr-owen. While the accomplished no- 
bleman was growing in favour with Elizabeth 
and her court, the Irish chieftain was gradually 
getting recognized as the main hope and leader 
of the Kinel Eoghain. Nay, he took a manifest 
pleasure in sustaining those two characters ; and 
one can hardly say whether he was most at home 
in the halls of Greenwich or Dungannon. In 
the year 1587 we find him in London, where he 
was ever a welcome visitor, soliciting the queen 
(Ah ! that " profound dissembling heart,") that 
he might be admitted to the honours and estates 
of Earl of Tyr-owen, under the " letters patent" 
granted to his grandfather, Con the Lame. To 
gain the favour of Elizabeth, it was always need- 
ful " to feign love and desire towards her, to ad- 
dress her in the style of passion ;"* and O'Neill, 
^J^ ith a tongue that " dropt manna," well knew 
the art of flattery. Much affectionate advice he 
gave the queen as to the good government of Ire- 
land, and specially solicited that the law against 
assuming the name of O'Neill, a most pestilent 
and rebellious name, might be strictly enforced ; 
so the letters patent were issued, and the queen 
solemnly invested him with both lands and title, 
(of which the former were not hers to grant, and 
the latter his soul abhorred,) reserving, however, 
I small piece of ground on the Blackwater, for a 
fortress which was to be built there ; and with 
certain stipulations for the benefit of old Tirlougb 

* See Hume — note in chap. 41 



74 LIFE OF HUGH 0*NEU.L, 

Lynnogh, who still held the nominal chieftaincy 
of the couatry. 

Hugh returned to Ireland with his letters pa- 
tent, a belted earl : and here, as a favoured cour- 
tier of the queen, the deputy was obliged to treat 
him with deference and honour ; while his in- 
creasing influence in Ulster gradually stripped 
Tirlough, the legitimate prince, of his power and 
numerous following ; and it became manifest that 
the grandson of the Dundalk blacksmith would 
soon predominate in the North. Those six com- 
panies of troops also that he kept on foot (in the 
queen's name, but for his own behoof) began to 
be suspicious in the eyes of the state : for it is 
much feared that he changes the men so soon as 
they thoroughly learn the use of arms, replacing 
them by others, all of his own clansmen, v/hom 
he diligently drills and reviews for somy 
unknown service. — And the lead he imports, — 
surely the roofing of that house of Dungannon 
will not need all these ship-loads of lead ; — lead 
enough to sheet Glenshane, or clothe the sides of 
Cairntocher . And, indeed, a rumour does reach 
the deputy in Dublin, that there goes on at Dun- 
gannon an incredible casting of bullets. No 
wonder that the eyes of the English governor 
began to turn anxiously to the north. 

Now it happened that O'Donnell, on the far 
north-west, was just then in high rage against "the 
foreigners of Dublin" by reason of some inti- 
mation conveyed to him by Perrot, that the 
ancient patrimony of the Kinel Conell was now 
*' shire ground," and ought to admit a sheriff. 
And the cliieftain's youthful son, the gallant lied 



IJFE OF HUGH o'nEIXL. 75 

Hugh, then a fiery stripling of fifteen, was already 
known throughout the five provinces of Ireland, 
not only " by the report of his beauty, his agility, 
and noble deeds," but as a sworn foe to the Sax- 
ons of the Pale. Moreover, " the English knew," 
says the chronicler of Hugh Roe, " that it was 
Judith, the daughter of O'Donnell, and sister of 
the before-mentioned Hugh, that was the spouse 
and best-beloved of the Earl O'Neill."* And if 
this princely Red Hugh should live to take the 
leading of his sept, — and if the two potent chief- 
tains of the North should forget their ancient 
feud and unite for the cause of Ireland ; — then, 
indeed, not only this settlement of the Ulster 
" counties" must be adjourned, one knows not 
how long ; but the Pale itself or the very Castle 
of Dublin might hardly protect her majesty's 
cfiicers. These were contingencies which any 
prudent agent of the Queen of England must 
speedily take order to prevent ; and we are now 
to see Perrot's device for that end. 

Near Rathmullan, on the western shore of 
Lough Swilly, looking towards the mountains of 
Inishowen, stood a monastery of Carmelites, and 
a church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, the 
most famous place of devotion in Tyrconnell, 
whither all the Clan-Conell, both chiefs and peo- 
ple, made resort at certain seasons to pay their de- 
votions. Here the young Red Hugh, with Mac 
Swyne of the battle-axes, O'Gallagher of Bally- 
shannon, and some other chiefs, were, in the sum- 

* MS. Life of Rea Hugh O'Donnell in Litrauy of 
R. I. A., translated from the Irish by O'Reilly, p. 3. 



76 LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 

mer of 1587, sojourning a short time, in part to 
pay their vows of religion ; but not without stag- 
hounds and implements of chase, having views 
upon the red-deer of Fnn^d arnl Jnishow^ti. One 
day, wliile the prince was here, a swift-sailing 
merchant ship doubled the promontory of Dunaff, 
stood up the lough, and cast anchor opposite 
Rathmullan ; a " bark, black-hatched, deceptive,** 
bearing the flag of England, and offering for sale, 
as a peaceful trader, her cargo of Spanish wine. 
And surely no more courteous merchant than the 
master of that ship had visited the North for many 
a year. He invited the people most hospitably on 
board, solicited them, whether purchasers or not, 
to partake of his good cheer, entertained them 
with music and wine, and so gained very speedily 
the good will of all Fanad. 

Red Hugh and his companions soon heard of 
the obliging merchant and his rare wines. They 
visited the ship where they were received with 
all respect, and indeed with unfeigned joy ; des- 
cended into the cabin, and with connoisseur dis- 
crimination tried and tasted, and finally drank 
too deeply : and at last when they would come 
on deck and return to the shore they found them- 
selves secured under hatches ; their weapons had 
been removed ; night had fallen ; they were pri- 
soners to those traitor Saxons. Morning dawned, 
and they looked anxiously towards the shore; 
but, ah . where is Rathmullan and the Carmelite 
church? And what wild coast is this? Past 
MaliB and the cliffs of Inishowen ; past Ben» 



I.TFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 77 

more, and southwards by the shoren of Antrim 
and the mountains of Mourne flew that ill- 
omened baHv, and never dropped anchor till she 
lay under the towers of Dublin. The treache- 
rous Perrot joyfully received his prize, and "ex- 
ulted," says an historian, " in the easiness and 
success with which he had procured hostages for 
the peaceable submission of O'Donnell."* And 
the prince of Tyrconnell was thrown into " a 
strong stone castle," and kept in heavy irons 
three years and three months, " meditating," 
says the chronicle, " on the feeble and impotent 
condition of his friends and relations, of his 
princes and supreme chiefs, of his nobles and 
clergy, his poets and professors."f Where we 
leave him for the present, to mingle vows of 
deepest vengeance with those of many other 
noble youths, " both Gadelians and Fingallians,** 
fellow captives with him in those accursed towers. 
Meanwhile, in Ulster, Hugh O'Neill was busy in 
the task he had now resolutely imposed on himself, 
striving to heal the feuds of rival chiefs, and out of 
those discordant elements to create and bind toge- 
ther an Irish nation — a noble design, for which 
perhaps the time was still unripe ; yet somewhat he 
did accomplish in that direction. With O'Cahan, 
whose territories he had wasted with hre and 
sword three years before, he now reconciled him- 
self, and sent his infant son to be fostered by that 
chieftain, and to learn speed and strength among 
the hills of Glen-given, by the banks of the crys- 

• Leland. 

t MS. Life of O'Dounell, p. 8. 



T8 LIFE OF HUGH o'nEIU- 

tal Roe, to back a-horse, and to chase the deer 
of Arachty. With the Mac Donnells of Antrim 
he renewed his friendship, and lent them on some 
of their expeditions a body of his well-trained 
galloglasses ; not without promise of like help 
from them, if need should be. Other chieftains 
he encouraged to resist the intrusion of sheriffs 
or garrisons for the Queen of England. It was 
even said that he harboured " seminaries" and 
foreign priests, than which nothing was then ac- 
counted more suspicious to a Protestant state. 
Yet O'Neill was apparently no strict Catholic ; 
and, while in Dublin, scrupled not " to accom- 
pany the Lord Deputy to the church and home 
again, and to stay and hear service, though the 
very nobles of the Pale," as Captain Lee declares, 
** as soon as they have brought him to the church 
door, depart as if they were wild cats."* In- 
deed honest Lee has no doubt that, " with good 
conference," he would even be reformed, " for 
he hath only one little cub of an English 
priest, by whom he is seduced for want of his 
friends' access to him, who might otherwise 
uphold him." On the whole a most complying 
conciliatory, and courteous man, " a special good 
member," as one might hope, " of that common- 
wealth ;" but still, no sheriffs, no bishops,f no 
judges. North of Slieve Gullion, the venerable 

* Lee's Memorial. 

f There was liowever at this period, and for some time 
before, a clerical person with the English garrison in 
Lecale, really chaplain to that garrison, (the only Pro- 
testants in his diocess,) but purporting to be Bisb<^ oC 
Down, and even of Connor, 



MFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 79 

Brehons still arbitrate undisturbed the causes of 
the people ; the ancient laws, civilization and re- 
ligion stand untouched. Nay it is credibly- 
rumoured to the Dublin deputy that this noble 
earl, forgetful apparently of his coronet, and 
golden chain, and of his high favour with so 
potent a princess, does about this time get i*ecog- 
nized and solemnly inaugurated as chieftain of hia 
sept, by the proscribed name of The O'Neill ; 
and at the rath of Tulloghoge, on the Stone of 
Koyalty, amidst the circling warriors, amidst the 
bards and Ollamhs of Tyr-eoghain, " receives an 
oath to preserve all the auncient former customs 
of the countrey inviolable, and to deliver up the 
succession peaceably to his Tanist ; and then hath 
a wand delivered unto him by one whose proper 
office that is ; after which, descending from the 
stone, he turneth himself round, thrice forward 
and thrice backward," — even as the O'Neills had 
done for a thousand years : altogether in the most 
un-English manner, and with the strangest cere- 
monies, which no garter king-at-arms could endure. 
The foreign policy also of the Northern chiefs 
received some strength at this period. In the 
year 1588, the mighty remnants of King Philip's 
vast armada, storm-tost and sorely buffeted by 
the wild sea of the Orkneys and Hebrides, came 
sweeping past the northern coast of Ireland ; and 
the Clan-Conal beheld with wonder those por- 
tentous floating fortresses, such as the Fomorian 
and Phoenician navigators of the northern seas 
had never sailed. But as the Spaniards made 
the headlands of Antrim, a storm came upon 
them from the north-west ; and with the iron 



CO LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

coast of Inishowen and Horn-head upon their lee, 
with grievous toil and danger, the poor mariners 
had to struggle westward and double those ter- 
rible cliffs. Many were dashed to pieces and 
utterly lost, both ships and men ; but some were 
driven into the harbours, and received from the 
neighbouring chieftains relief and hospitality,* 
until they found means to return into their own 
country. The O'Donnell, indeed, father to our 
imprisoned Hugh Roe, who seems to have been 
a weak old man, and much under the influence 
of two Englishmen, named Hovenden, whom he 
permitted to reside in his country, was led to 
regard the unfortunate Spaniards as enemies and 
invaders (forgetful that the enemies of England 
must needs be his friends), and when a large 
ship was driven into Lough Foyle and staved to 
pieces on the Inishowen rocks, O'Donnell and 
the Hovendens attacked the shipwrecked crew at 
Elagh near Derry, killed some of them and sent 
the rest as prisoners to the Deputy. (Oh ! that 
Red Hugh had but been there !) But the 
Mac Swynes and other chiefs of Tyr-connell 
were more humane, or better knew their natural 
allies. A ship under the command of Don An- 
tonio de Leyva was driven upon the coast be- 
tween Sligo and Ballyshannon, and O'Ruarc, 
Prince of Breffni, afforded them not only an 
asylum, but protection against Bingham, an Eng- 
lish officer who held some places in Connaught, 
end who presumed to demand from O'Ruarc 
his shipwrecked guests as the queen's prisoners,! 

• Moryson. f O'Sullivan. 



1.11% OF HUGH 0*NEILL,. 81 

But, above all, the O'Neill, who foresaw advan- 
tages to be derived from a Spanish alliance, was 
most distinguished for the kindness shown to 
those fugitives. He received them with honour 
at Dungannon, treated them with high conside- 
ration, conversed with them on the policy of King 
Philip and the Catholic powers ; and doubtless 
explained to them, for the information of their 
master, the situation of the North ; — how the 
old Irish hated the Queen of England and hoped 
in King Philip — how the Spanish landing at 
Smerwick had proved unavailing by reason of 
the powerful English faction in Munster ; and 
how differently a band of auxiliary Spaniards 
would be received amongst the aboriginal septs 
of the North. 

And now the new Deputy, Fitzwilliam, assisted 
the views of O'Neill by his treatment of a north- 
ern chief who was weak enough to trust an Eng- 
lish governor. Hugh Mac Mahon, on the death of 
his brother the chieftain of that sept, found him- 
self opposed by several other branches of the 
family who also aspired to the chieftaincy. These 
were Patrick, son of Art, Ebhir, or Ever chief of 
Farney, and Brien of Dartry. Singly he could 
not cope with his powerful rivals, and applied, 
in an evil hour, to Fitzwilliam, requesting hia 
alliance, and the assistance of the Pale to esta- 
blish him in his inheritance, aa he called it : for 
the deceased Mac Mahon had been one of those 
who surrendered his country to the queen and 
took a " re-grant" of it, by English tenure, to 
him and his heirs, with remainder, in default of 



82 LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL, 

heirs male, to his brother Hugh,* which was ttc 
reason of the threatened war ; for Monaghan lika 
Tyr-owen and Thomond, could not abide re- 
grants, estates tail, or " English tenures." Mao 
Mahon's application was right welcome to the 
English who desired nothing so much as an op- 
portunity of interfering between the Irish chiefs, 
and so of strengthening foreign influence at the 
expense of all the contending parties. 

Fitzwilliam in the first place demanded a pre- 
sent of six hundred cows (" for such and no other,*' 
says Moryson, " are the Irish bribes,") and then 
the Deputy marched northwards pretending to 
consider the whole matter referred to his decision, 
and, that he might adjudicate with dignity, took 
possession of Monaghan which he garrisoned for 
the queen ; and then awarded to his ally Mac 
Mahon the nominal chieftaincy over a small part 
of his territory, and to his rivals the exclusive 
rule over certain other portions : thus dividing^ 
according to an immemorial English maxim, the 
following of a potent chieftain amongst several 
hostile claimants, and so breaking, as he hoped, 
the power of their resistance to foreign encroach- 
ment. Then poor Mac Mahon having failed ic 
some part of the stipulated payment, (as feeling, 
perhaps, that he had not received value,) was ar- 
rested by order of Fitzwilliam, who immediately 
proceeded once more to Monaghan with consi- 
derable forces to " settle" that country finally. 
A charge was soon found against the prisoner. 
He had lately raised his tribute in the usual mao- 

• Moryson. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 83 

ner from his refractory tributary of Farney, by 
.eading thither a military expedition and driving 
away the spoil ; which if it were not a levying of 
war against the queen, the Deputy could not tell 
what it was. Yet, not to condemn without hear- 
jig, or refuse a subject the benefits of English 
law — and perhaps with a view of shewing the 
northerns what was that happy system of polity 
which they contumeliously rejected — a Jur?/ wa3 
to be empanelled to try Mac Mahon — the first 
jury in Ulster — the composition and arrangement 
of which deserve study as affording a model in 
that kind. 

Spenser has informed us of the difficulties 
which attended trial by jury in Ireland at that 
time ; for " most of the freeholders," says Ire- 
naeus, " are Irish, which when the cause shall fall 
betwixt an Englishman and an Irish, or between 
the queen and any freeholder of that country, 
they make no more scruple to pass against an 
Englishman and the queen, though it bee to 
strayn their oathes, than to drinke milke un- 
strayned,"* the inconvenience of which he thus 
laments : — " I dare undertake that at this day 
bhere are more attainted lands concealed from 
her majestic than she hath now possession of in 
all Ireland ; and it is no small inconvenience ; 
for besides that she looseth so much lande as 
should turne to her great profite, she besides looseth 
60 many good subjects which might be assured 
unto her as those lands would yeelde inhabitants 
and living unto." And when Eudoxus suggests 

* Spenser's View, p. 33. 



b4 LIFE OP HUGH O'NEILL. 

that all this " might be much helped in the judges 
and cheefe magistrates which have the choosing 
and nomination of those jurors, if they woulc? 
have dared to appoint either most Englishmen or 
such Irishmen as were of the soundest judgment 
and dzsposition" IrenjEus immediately objects — 
*' Then would the Irish partie crie out of par- 
tiality and complaine, he hath no justice — he is 
not used as a subject." 

Now, in arranging this jury to try Mac Mahon, 
it is too clear that the Deputy was not so 
well acquainted with the delicate theory of 
juries as subsequent officers became ; yet in his 
own rude way he attained the end very well 
Twelve soldiers were empanelled on the shortest 
notice, of whom four, being Englishmen, weiig 
suffered to go and come at pleasure, and the othet 
eight, being of Irish birth, by close confinement 
and the simple process of starvation, were com- 
pelled to find the prisoner guilty.* And so 
within two days after Fitzwilliam's arrival in the 
country this unfortunate chief was indicted, ar- 
raigned, convicted, and executed at his own 
door. The deputy forthwith divided his country 
amongst some English officers, of whom the prin- 
cipal were Marshal Sir Henry Bagnal and one 
Captain Hensflower. " And the Irish," says Mo- 
ryson, " spared not to say that these me» were 

• Moryson. This writer does not give these facts on 
his own authority, which might have been construed as 
bringing the English tribunals into contempt, but in 
such cases always prefixes the words '* The Irish say." 
He does not contradict the statements, which besides axe 
incontrovertible on the authority of other historians. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEIJLI*. 85 

all the contrivers of his death, and that every 
one was paid something for his share."* Those 
English officers did not indeed at that time enter 
upon the enjoyment of their Monaghan estates : 
for Mac Mahon's rival Brien, Lord of Dartry, a 
more active and resolute character, was elected 
by his sept the Mac Mahon and chieftain of Mo- 
naglian ; and held his country against the stranger 
for a time. 

Space would fail us to recount all the villaniea 
which both English and Irish historians tell of 
this greedy Deputy Sir William Fitzwilliam ; 
how he made strict search, through such parts of 
the North as he dared to enter, for Spanish trea- 
sure, left there, it was said, by the shipwrecked 
Armada; and how, finding no gold, he took 
means to seize upon two chiefs, Mac Toole and 
O'Doherty, and imprisoned them in Dublin castle, 
till O'Doherty bribed him, with many herds of 
cows, to release him. On the whole, his transac- 
tions with the North had little tendency to make 
Ulster in love with English laws or governors ; 
" rather, indeed, a loathing of English go\ern- 
ment," says Moryson, "began to grow in the 
northern lords, and they shunned as much as they 
could to admit any sheriffs or any English among 
them " So when the Deputy informed the Mac 
Guire of Fermanagh that his country, being now 
" shire ground," must prepare to admit a sheriff, 
to execute the writs of the Queen of England, to 
empanel juries and do other sheriff-duty thero, 
" Your sheriff," said Mac Guire, " shall be wel- 

• Moryson. 



86 LIFE OF HUGH o'nEIT.L. 

come, hut let me knotv his erick, (how much his 
life is worth, ) that if my people should cut off his 
head, 1 may levy it upon the country." 

O'Neill, from his house in Dungannon, calmly 
regarded all these things ; but his heart swelled 
secretly with hope and joy : for he knew that the 
time was not far off, when the banners of Tyr- 
owen should wave in the van of the banded sej)ts 
of Ulster, and the haughty baltle shout of Lamh 
deu.vg affright those traitor deputies in Dublin 
castle. 



XIFE OP HUGH O'NEILL. 



CHAPTER VII. 
o'netll at court — bagnal's sister— escape 

OF o'dONNELL TRINITY COLLEGE. 

1590—1594. 

Hugh ka Gavej^och, son to Sbane O'Xeill hy 
O'Donnell's wife, appears now for a moment upon 
the stage. He bore a deadly hatred against Hugh 
of Dungannon as an usurper of the name and lio- 
nours of O'Neill ; and this year we find him de- 
nouncing his chieftain to the Deputy and council, 
as a traitor, informing them that certain noble 
Spaniards from the fleet of Medina Sidonia, had 
been entertained at Dungannon, had received 
presents from O'Neill, and also letters for the 
King of Spain, soliciting assistance against the 
Queen of England, and promising support ; all 
which he, Hugh of the Fetters, would prove, 
either upon the body of the accLsed by way of 
combat, or by evidence on oath, as to the Deputy 
should seem meet. Fitzwilliam prohibited the 
combat, but set a day for the production of the 
evidence, and prepared with much dignity to 
hold solemn inquest upon so important a crimi- 



88 LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 

nal.* But before that day arrived, O'Neill 
had the prosecutor arrested as a foul conspirator 
against his lawful chieftain, had him tried in 
a most summary manner and condemned to be 
strangled, a sentence which was forthwith exe« 
cuted, though not without difficulty ; for no man 
in all Tyr-owen would be the executioner of one 
who bore the honoured name of O'Neill ; and 
Hugh himself, it was said, had to end the diffi- 
culty, and his prisoner's life together, with his 
own hand. It would seem that the Prince of 
Ulster was not a man to be given in charge t*» 
the juries of an English Deputy. 

But to dissipate these clouds of suspicion and 
even direct accusation which began to blacken 
his name in the court of England, O'Neill pro- 
ceeded to London, in his Saxon character of earl ; 
and having left Ireland without leave asked of 
the Deputy, (which it seems was uncustomary for 
Irish peers,) he was on his arrival placed under a 
kind of nominal arrest, as matter of etiquette : 
but soon we find him high in favour as usual, 
mingling with the court " at the Honour of 
Greenwich," says Camden, "as noblemen use 
to do," deliberating w^eighty affairs of state with 
the chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton, and en- 
tering warmly, even eagerly, into all Elizabeth's 
views for the civilizing of Ireland. As for the 
territory of Tyr-owen, he would have it formed 
into " a shire or two — with gaols for holding of 
Sessions ;"f and for the name of O'Neill, if tha^ 

O'Sullivan. This author says, Fitzwilliam sum- 
moned O'Neill to Stradbally. 
?■ f Moryson. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEI1.L. 69 

displeased so fair a princess, he would never bear 
it more. 

** My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, 
Because it is an enemy to thee." 

He protested that he Jiad assumed that name, 
only to prevent some other of the tribe from 
usurping it — and would surely renounce it ; " yet 
beseeching that he might not be urged to pro- 
mise that upon oath.^^^ Amongst other articles 
gravely agreed upon by O'Neill, as the basis of a 
final settlement, were, that he should not foster 
with any neighbouring chiefs ; should give no 
aid to the Scots, and receive none from them, — 
should not harbour monks or friars, nor have in- 
telligence with foreigners — nor levy black rent — 
nor suffer his people to wear glibbes^ or other 
Irish apparel — and finally that he would live at 
peace with old Tirlough Lynnogh and other 
neighbouring chiefs ; yet all this " upon condi- 
tion that Tirlough and the other chiefs of Ulster 
should in like manner engage themselves to keep 
peace with him ; lest when he was quiet and 
thought no harm, he should be exposed to the 
injuries of those turbulent persons."! Surely 
one of the fairest conditions, which he seems to 
have been well aware could not be complied with. 
His old ally, the Earl of Ormond, and the Lord 
Chancellor Hatton having become sureties for 
O'Neill's performance of all he had undertaken, 
he returned to Ireland, and was to enter into for- 
mal indentures with the deputy, binding himself 

• Moryson. f Caraden. Queen Eliz. 



DO LIFE OF HUOH o'NEILL. 

to all these articles, by the first of August in the 
same year ; but as he steadily required that all 
the other chiefs of Ulster should rome in and 
take on thera similar engagements, the indentures 
were never executed ; the first of August came 
and passed ; — and the settlement of Ulster was 
indefinitely deferred " by many subtile shifts, 
whereof," says Moryson, " he had plenty." 

He returned to prosecute his grand project of 
northern confederation, and to perfect the organi- 
sation of the Kinel-Eoghain. But matters were 
still miripe for an effectual effort against English 
power ; one main limb of the enterprize was 
wanting while the present feeble chief of Tyr- 
connell ruled that potent sept, and young BeaU 
Dearg* O'Donnell still pined in the dungeons of 
Fitzwilliam. For the present he could only bide 
his time ; and for another year there is nothing 
to record, save an incident of a rather domestic 
and tender nature. 

The marshal, Sir Henry Bagnal, and his Eng- 
lish garrison in the castle and abbey of Newry, 
were a secret thorn in the side of O'Neill. Thf / 
lay upon one of the main passes to the North, 
frowning over Iveagh and the O'Hanlon's coun- 
try;, and he had deeply voAved that one day the 
ancient monastery, De viridi ligno, should be 
swept clear of this foreign soldiery. But in that 
castle of Newry the Saxon Marshal had a fair 
tjister, a woman of rarest oeauiy, wJtiom O'Neill 
lliought it sin to leave for a spouse to some churl 

* ^^ mouth. 



LIFE OF HU<irt o'nEILL. 91 

of an English undertaker.* — ^Besides, 'twas pity 
so sweet a soul should sit in darkness of Protes- 
tant heresy ; — rather than so, he would undertake 
her conversion himself, and make her the bride 
of an Irish chieftain. And, indeed, we next hear 
of him as a love-suitor (with that persuasive 
tongue of his) at the feet of the English beauty. 
How or where he met, and wooed and won this 
maiden, or by what legal or ecclesiastical process 
he divorced his lawful wife to make way for her, 
we have, unhappily, no record : but that he sped 
in his wooing, and also in his divorce suit, is 
plain ; for the lady fled from her brother's castle, 
and was borne in triumph to Dungannon, where 
she speedily became reconciled to the church, and 
was duly wedded to the Prince of Ulster. Sir 
Henry conceived his house dishonoured by this 
alliance, because O'Neill, as he said, had another 
wife alive, — putting little faith, as it seemed, in 
the divorce. He had been sufficiently unfriendly 
to the chief before ; but from that hour there 
grew up the deadliest enmity between them ; 
which afterwards bore fruit, as we shall see. 

But the time had arrived when Red Hugh 
O'Donnell was to see his native mountains once 
more. A year before this, he had escaped from 



* O'Sullivan is the only writer who tells of this lady's 
beauty. " Tironus Bagnalis sororem foeniinara forma 
conspicuam, speciei pulchritudine captus, rapuerat, nia- 
trimonio sibi conjunxerat, et a Protestante couverti ad 
fidem Catholicam fecerat." — 4to. 132. There is a novel 
founded on this story, and entitled *' The Adventurers," 
lively with incident, but wanting the colouring and cha- 
racter of the period 



yi LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILIi. 

Dublin Castle with a noble Lagenian youth of 
the O'Cavanaghs. They fled southwards, and 
made for that "long extensive mountain, the 
boundary between the Gathelians of the Lage- 
nian province and the English of Dublin,"* tra- 
versed the hills all night, and before morning had 
passed the " red mountain," hotly pursued. They 
took refuge with Felim O'Toole, who was un- 
able to protect them, and gave* them up to tho 
English. For that time they had to return to 
their dungeon, where O'Donnell was loaded with 
*' heavy iron fetters," and languished there for 
another whole year, " until the feast of Chrisir- 
mas, 1592, when it seemed." says the chronicle, 
" to the Son of the Virgin time for him to escape." 
Again he found aii opportunity to fly, accom-' 
panied by Henry and Art, two sons of Shane 
O'Neill, and made once more for the glens of 
Wicklov/. The mountains were covered with 
snow and all that night the storm beat fiercely 
upon them. They did not however again trust 
themselves with the O'Tooles, but struggled still 
southwards to reach the pass of Glenmalur, 
(Gleann Maolughra,) where the gallant Fiach 
Mac Hugh, victor of Glendalough, would be 
sure to protect them against all the forces of tne 
Pale. Three days and nights they wandered 
through the mountains, feeding upon leaves and 
grass,! ^^^ famishing in the savage winter wea- 
ther : and at last O'Byrne's people found two of 
them (for poor Art had perished) stretched under 

• MS. Translation of Life of O'Donnell, p. 10. 
t O'SuUivan. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILIi. 93 

the shelter of a cliff, benumbed, and nearly life- 
less. The O'Bvrne brought them to his house, 
and revived, and warmed, and clothed them, and 
instantly sent a messenger to Hugh O'Neill (with 
whom he was then in close alliance) with the 
joyful tidings of O'Donnell's escape. O'Neill 
heard it with delight, and sent a faithful retainer, 
Til-lough Buidhe O'Hagan, who was well ac- 
quainted with the country, to guide the young 
chief into Ulster. After a few days of rest and 
refreshment, O'Donnell and his guide set forth, 
and the Irish chronicler minutely details that peri- 
lous journey ; — how they crossed the Liffey far 
to the westward of Fitzwilliam's hated towers, 
and rode cautiously through Fingal and Meath, 
avoiding the garrisons of the Pale, until they 
arrived at the Boyne, a short distance west of 
Inver Colpa, (Drogheda,) " where the Danes had 
built a noble city," — how they sent round their 
horses through the town, and themselves passed 
over in a fisherman's boat ; how they passed by 
Mellifont, a great monastery " which belonged 
to a noted young Englishman attached to Hugh 
O'Neill," and, therefore, met no interruption 
there, — rode right through Dundalk, and entered 
tlie friendly Irish country where they had nothing 
more to fear. One night they rested at Feadh 
Mor (the Fews,) where O'Neill's brother had a 
house, and the next day crossed the Blackwater 
at Moy, and so to Dungannon, where O'Neill 
received them right joyfully. And here "the 
two Hughs" entered into a strict and cordial 
friendship, and told each other of their wrongs 
wid of their hopes. O'Neill listened, with such 



feelings as one can imagine, to the story of the 
youth's base kidnapping and cruel imprisonment 
in darkness and chains; and the impetuous 
I^eal Dearg heard, with scornful rage, of the 
English deputy's atrocity towards Mac Mahon, 
and attempts to bring his accursed sheriffs and 
►juries amongst the ancient Irish of Ulster. And 
they deeply swore to bury for ever the unhappy 
feuds of their families, and to stand by each 
other, with all the powers of the North against 
their treacherous and relentless foes. The chiefs 
parted, and O'Donnell, with an escort of the Tyr- 
ovven cavalry, passed into Mac Gwire's country. 
The chief of Fermanagh received him with ho- 
nour, eagerly joined in the confederacy, and gave 
him '' a black polished boat," in which the prince 
and his attendants rowed through Lough Erne, 
und glided down that " pleasant salmon-breeding 
river"* which leads to Ballyshannon and the an- 
cient seats of the Clan-Conal. 

We may conceive with wha^; stormy joy the 
tribes of Tyrconnell welcomed their prince ; with 
what mingled pity and wrath, thanksgivings and 
curses, they heard of his chains, and wanderings, 
and sufferings, and beheld the feet that used to 
bound so lightly on the hills, swollen and crippled 
by that cruel frost, by the crueller fetters of the 
Saxon. But little time was now for festal rejoicing, 
or the unprofitable luxury of cursing; for just then 
Sir Richard Bingham, the English leader in 
Connaught, relying on the irresolute nature of 
tld O'Donnell, and not aware of Red Hugh's re» 

• MS. Life of O'DonneU 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 96 

turn, liad sent two hundred men by sea to Do- 
negal, where they took by surprise the Franciscan 
monastery, drove away the monks, (making small 
account of their historic studies and learned an^ 
nalsYand. garrisoned the buildings for the queen. 
Issuing out from thence, the soldiers made raids 
into the country round about, spoiling the people, 
driving away their sheep and oxen, and burning 
their houses on the march. The fiery Hugh 
could ill endure to hear of these outrages, or 
brook an English garrison upon the soil of Tyr- 
connell. He collected the people in hot haste, 
led them instantly to Donegal ; and commanded 
the English by a certain day and hour, to betake 
themselves with all speed back to Connaught and 
leave behind them the rich spoils they had taken ; 
all which they thought it prudent, without fur- 
ther parley, to do. And so the monks of St. 
Francis returned to their home and their books, 
gave thanks to God, and prayed, as well they 
might, for Hugh O'Donnell.* 

In the following spring, on the third day of 
May, there was a solemn meeting of the warriors, 
clergy, and bards of Tyrconnell, at the rock of 
Doune in Kilmacrenan, *' the nursing-place of 
Columkille." And here the father of Red Hugh 
renounced the chieftaincy of the sept, and his im- 
petuous son, at nineteen years of age, was duly 
inaugurated by the Erenach O'Firghil, and made 
the O'Donnell, with the ancient ceremonies of 
his race. And surely it was time that the powers 

* It was in Donegal Abbey the " Annals of the Four 
Masters" were compiled. 
t MS. Life of O'Donnell 



96 1.1FE OF HUGH 0*NEIL1.. 

of Tyrconnell should be wielded by a resolute 
hand. 

Upon the eastern border of O'Donnell's country, 
* where the two old rivers Finn and Mourne, 
which the Deluge left behind, mingle their wa- 
ters,"* dwelt Tirlough Lynnogh O'Neill, in the 
town and castle of Strabane, holding such poor 
state as the Dungannon chief still permitted him. 
This foolish old Tirlough kept certain English 
troops in his country under the command of one 
Captain Willis ; perilous auxiliaries for an Irish 
chief. And " it was a-heart break," says the 
chronicler, " to Hugh O'Donnell, that the Eng- 
lish of Dublin should thus obtain a knowledge of 
the country." He fiercely attacked Strabane, 
drove back Tirlough and his Englishmen as far 
as Glengiven (Dungiven) and besieged them in 
O'Cahan's castle on the banks of Roa river. 
O'Cahan came forth to treat with O'Donnell, re- 
minded him that he had been his foster-son, and 
that the fugitives were his guests, and so per- 
suaded the young chief to refrain from violating 
the hospitality of a friendly roof. For that time 
O'Donnell retired ; but he never rested, nor suf- 
fered Tirlough to rest, while those detested Eng- 
lish were on his borders. The old chief was soon 
obliged to banish his outlandish allies, and accept 
the powerful friendship of O'Donnell in their 
place ; and this is the last we hear of Tirlough. 
He died the next year. 

Shortly after, we find this Captain "Willis on 



MS Ufa of O'Donnell. 



LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 97 

the scene again ; Maguire, it seems, had made 
some kind of compact with Fitzwilliam that no 
English marauder, in name of a sheriff, should 
be sent into Fermanagh ; and in consideration of 
this promise had given the corrupt Deputy a herd 
of three hundred cows. Yet in the year 1593, 
Willis having been driven out of Tyr-owen, is 
found in Maguire's country, purporting to be a 
sheriff there, and "having with him three hun- 
dred of the very rascals and scum of the king- 
dom ;"* and all living, says Moryson, " upon the 
spoil of the country," until Fermanagh could en- 
dure the banditti no longer. Mac Guire and his 
people set upon Willis who had fortified himself, 
after the usual manner of the English, in a 
church, reduced him to extremity, and were on 
the point of destroying both sheriff and posse 
comitatuSj when Hugh O'Neill interfered to save 
their lives, on condition of their instantly quitting 
the country.f 

But Mac Guire did not lay down his arms. 
The English of Connaught were growing too 
strong to be endured as near neighbours ; and 
the forces of Fermanagh being in the field, he led 
them southwards by the eastern shore of Lough 
Allen, and the base of the Iron mountain, through 
the south of Breffni O'Ruarc, through Corran, 
and over the bridge of Boyle abbey to the plains 
of Magh-ai. Bingham was then in camp upon a 
hill near Tulsk ; and a body of his cavalry meet- 
ing with a party of Mac Guire's while patrolling 
at night, fled to the main body and were pursued 

* Lee's Memorial. t Morysoa. 

a '' 



98 

by the Irish with slaughter into their trenches. 
William CliiFord, who commanded the party, 
was slain ;* and the primate Mac Gauran,f who 
resided with Mac Guire, and had accompanied 
him on the expedition, was among the slain on 
the side of the Irish. 

The Lord Deputy immediately dispatched a 
" hosting" into Mac Guire's territory. A large 
army of the Meath and Leinster forces under 
command of Marshal Bagnall and Hugh O'Neill, 
marched into Fermanagh from the east, and 
Bingham's troops invaded it from Connaught. 
Mac Guire boldly met them at the " ford of the 
Lamb's corner," where the river issues from 
Lough Erne and contested that passage stoutly ; 
but O'Neill having crossed at the head of the 
cavalry and charged the Irish in flank, Mac Guire 
was obliged to retreat. In this charge the zea- 
lous O'Neill was wounded in the thigh ; and as 
the Irish chronicler relates, " he thought this 
well for him, because he was not suspected by 
the English." The army proceeded through 
Mac Guire's country wasting and plundering in 
their march, and then departed, leaving a body 
of troops with Conor Roe Mac Guire whom 
the English set up as a rival to the lawful chief- 
lain. This was the first Queen's Mac Guire : 
and it was confidently hoped that civil war 
would soon desolate the lands of Fermanagh and 

* M.S. Life of O'Donnell. O'Sulhvan calls the leader 
wbo fell Guelforcl : and Camden tells us that the Eng- 
lish gained a considerable victory here. 

f " One Gauranus, a priest, whom tlie pope (forsooth) 
^ui made primate of all Ireland." — Moryson. 



LIFE OF HUGH O NEILL. 99 

leave it ready for English sheriffs in a year or 
two. 

Young O'Donnell could ill endure this Saxon 
settlement on Lough Erne. To keep the English 
out of Ulster was the grand passion of his life: 
and his fiery spirit chafed at the strange policy 
of O'Neill, which we can well believe he did not 
understand. Yet hitherto he bad acted by the 
advice of his cautious confederate, and refrained 
from joining Mac Guire ; but when Fitzwilliam, 
in the beginning of 1594, led another army to 
the North, took Enniskillen by surprise, and left 
an ICnglish garrison there, Hugh Roe could look 
on in silence no longer. He led the Clan-Conal 
into Fermanagh and laid close siege to Enniskil- 
len, which he cut off from all communication 
with the country. The northern Irish were not 
skilled in the attack or defence of fortified places, 
and this siege seems to have been carried on en- 
tirely by way of blockade. All summer O'Don- 
nell lay before it, and his troops scoured the coun- 
try to the southward, burning and wasting the 
lands in possession of the English : until at last 
by the month of August the garrison had con- 
sumed all their provisions, and it was hoped must 
soon surrender from mere famine. 

While Hugh Roe was here, a messenger came 
to him from the North, announcing that a force 
of Scottish auxiliaries whom he expected had ar- 
rived in the Foyle, under command of Donald 
Gorm Mac Donald, and Mac Leod of Ara. He 
hastened to Derry to meet them, found there an 
efficient and v/ell-armed body of troops, and in 



100 LIFE OP HUGH o'NEILL. 

corporated them (as the Irish historian asserts"*) 
with the Irish forces : but this is improbable, aa 
in dress, arms, and manner of fighting the Scot? 
differed considerably from the Irish. Their prin- 
cipal weapon was the huge two-handled broad 
sword, and they wore the tartan of their clans: while 
the Irish infantry bore sharp battle-axes and short 
swords, and were enveloped in long woollen cloaks 
which in action they often wound round the left 
arm.f Bat whatever may have been the organi- 
zation of these Scots, or their plac'e in battle, 
they were a welcome aid to their brother Celts of 
Ireland, and did good service in these wars 
against the enemy. 

While Red Hugh was absent from the camp, 
the Clan-Conal and Mac Gwire, lying before En- 
niskillen, received news of a large army coming 
upon them from Connaught, commanded by Sir 
Edward Herbert and Sir Henry Duke, to raise 
the siege and victual the garrison. Mac Gwire 
prepared to meet them, and looked anxiously 
northward for O'Donnell and the Scots. And 
now the English had passed the mountains of 
Leitrim, and he could see the smoke of their 
devastating progress as they burned the country 
in their march ; when most opportunely a body 
of three hundred galloglasses and one hundred 
cavalry, of the well-trained troops of Tyr- 
owen, with Cormac O'Neill the chief's brother 
at their head, arrived in the Irish camp. With 



• MS. Life of O'Donnell. 

t Spenser, See also for dress of Irish and Scotch, 
MS Life of O'Donnell. and Ware. 



LIFE OF HUGH O NEILL. 101 

this reinforcement, and the troops of Ferma- 
nagh and Tyr-connell, Mac Gwire and Cormac 
waited for the enemy at a ford near Enniskillen 
and encountered them in a pitched battle. From 
morning till night the English pressed on gal- 
lantly, and were as fiercely met, but at last their 
whole army was utterly routed and pursued over 
the river with such slaughter and havoc that the 
baggage was left behind. All the stores of bread 
intended to relieve Enniskillen were lost in the 
river ; and that battle-ground is called the Ford 
of Biscuits unto this day.* Enniskillen was im- 
mediately surrendered to Mac Gwire. The Eng- 
lish fled to Sligo through the mountains of 
Breffni O'Ruarc, and Fermanagh was once more 
cleared of foreign soldiery. O'Donnell was re- 
turning rapidly from Derry, when messengers 
met him with the news of the victory : " and he 
was sorry," says the chronicle, " that he had not 
been in that battle as he would have prevented 
the escape of so many of the English." 

Deputy Fitzwilliam was about this time re- 
called to England. All historiansf of both nations 
concur in representing him as one of the most 
flagitious, greedy, cruel, and corrupt governors 
that an English monarch ever sent to Ireland. 
To the nobles and people of the Pale he was as 
odious as to the Irish enemy — for " he never 
respected any man's necessity," says Lee, " in 

* Beal-atha-na riscoid. See MS. Life of O Donnell, 
and O'SuUivan. The latter calls the place vadum-panum 
hiscoctorum. 

t See Camden, Moryson, Cox, Lee, O'SuUivan, Mac 
Geoghegan ■ 



102 LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

comparison of his own commodity ;" and then, 
'* he kept so miserable a Christmas," as Dublin 
had never seen before.* But his vicerojalty is 
famous for the founding of Dublin University. 
Perrot had some years before proposed to convert 
St. Patrick's catliedral into a college ; and the pro- 
ject was bitterly opposed by Archbishop Loftus, 
who had other uses for the revenues of his two 
cathedrals ; and " was particularly interested in 
the livings of this church," says Leland, " by leases 
and estates which he had procured for himself 
and his kinsmen" — being, in fact one of those 
rapacious bishops censured by Dr. Mant, who 
alienated the lands of the church, and reduced 
many bishoprics '• as low as sacrilege could make 
them."f Nothing, therefore, was done for that 
time : but, after Loftus had procured the recal, 
disgrace, and death of Perrot (for he never 
could forgive that sacrilegious attempt in a lay- 
man) he determined to signalize his own zeal for 
education, and heartily co-operated with the 
queen in her renewed plan of a college. And 
instead of despoiling his churches for the pur- 
pose, he pointed out, as a convenient site, that 
"■ suppressed" monastery of All Hallows, then in 
the hands of the Dublin corporation. He con- 
vened a meeting, prevailed on the mayor and 
aldermen to give the ground and buildings for so 
meritorious an object ; and to collect funds, cir- 
culars were addressed to the principal gentry of 



• Lee's Memorial. 

t Mant. " History of the Church of Ireland," p. 445 



LIFE OP HUGH o'NEILL. 103 

the Pale, entreating assistance by way of pri- 
vate contribution : but Dr. Mant gives the reply 
of one person to that application, and seems to 
infer from it that the proceeds thus obtained 
were very small : — ^' He had applied to all the 
gentlemen of the barony of Louth, whose an- 
swer was, that they were poor, and not able to 
give anything." 

There were forfeited lands, however, in the 
south ; and some abbeys which had lately fallen 
into the hands of English rapacity ; — O'Dorney 
in Kerry, Cong in Mayo. Besides innumerable 
monasteries in Ulster, long since " suppressed," 
as we saw ; but where the monks still contuma- 
ciously did their alms-deeds ; and prayed for the 
souls of many an Irish chieftain who had endowed 
their houses to that end. Some of these a gene- 
rous queen could bestow (in a certain anticipa- 
tory manner) upon her new Protestant college. 
The college, indeed, was long kept out of its 
northern property — " was frustrated," as Dr. 
Leland has it, " of the benefit of its grants by 
the wars in Ulster :" but being a true undertak- 
ing college, it took the " letters patent" in the 
meantime, and was content to wait, like other un- 
dertakers, and realize the queen's bounty by de- 
grees, as the sword of her generals and the plots 
of her statesmen should extend English power in 
Ireland. 

Thus was founded and endowed, by a Protes- 
tant princess, this great Protestant university, 
for strictly Protestant purposes — with Catholio 
funds, and upon the lands of a Catholic abbey. 



104 i^TFR OF avail </i£i:fi.b> 



CHAPTER VIIL 

-CLONTIBP.KT. 

A. D. 1594—1595. 

It had become too plain that Hugh O'Neill was 
not likely to answer those politic ends for which 
Elizabeth's government had been so long pro- 
tecting and cherishing, and, as they believed, 
educating him. His ingratitude, as English his- 
torians term it, had become too apparent. 
" Though lifted up," says Spenser, " by her ma- 
jesty out of the dust to that he hath now wrought 
himself unto, now he playeth like the frozen 
snake." And nothing better, Spenser fears, 
would be the result if Shane O'Neill's sons could 
be taken out of the hands of this Hugh, and set 
up as rivals to his power — for " if they could 
overthrow him, who should afterwards overthrow 
them, .^" Wherefore he infers " it is most dan- 
gerous to attempt any such plot."* However 
the queen's councillors, pondering these things 
with care, and believing that O'Neill was the 
main hope of the northern confederacy, advised 
the Deputy, as the best that could be done in the 
mean time, to offer O'Donnell " pardon," pro- 
vided, says Moryson, "he would sever himself 

• Spenser's View p. 180. 



LIFE OF HUGH 0*NEILIi. 105 

froiQ C'Neill ;" a proposal which, it hardly needs 
lo be said, took no effect. Imagine the haughty 
Beal-Dearg receiving that offer of an English 
fardou ! 

Private orders had been given to Sir William 
Russell, the new Deputy, to make a prisoner of 
O'Neill if ever he should have him in his pOwer ; 
of which the chief had immediate information 
through a friend. " It is credibly made known 
unto him," says Lee, " that upon what security 
soever he- should come in, your majesty's pleasure 
is to have him detained." Yet, in contempt of 
tliis base plot, O'Neill appeared in Dublin imme- 
diately en Russell's landing, where he found him- 
self tbrmally accused before the council, by his 
mortal enemy, Bagnal, of various articles of trea- 
son — of confederating with the Northern chiefs, 
of being The O'Neill, of harbouring priests, and 
finally, of seducing the accuser's sister and car- 
rying her off to Tyr-owen. It was debated in 
council whether the chieftain should be detained 
a prisoner to answer these charges, notwithstand- 
ing a " protection" he had obtained : but the ma- 
jority, either through scruples about violating 
the protection, " or from some secret affec- 
tion for Tyrone,"* declared that he ought in jus- 
tice and honour to be dismissed. Orniond, how- 
ever, informed O'Neill privately that Russell 
would obey his orders from England and arrest 
him unless he speedily escaped from Dublin. 
And no man better knew the treacherous devices 
of English policy than this Earl of Ormond, 

• Camdeu. Queen Elizabeth. 



lOfj I.1FE OF HUGH O'nTIILL. 

wliose indignant letter, in reply to the Lorci 
Treasurer Burleigh (when similar orders had 
been sent to himself ), is recorded by Carte : — 
" My Lord, I will never use treachery to any 
man, for it would both touch her highness's ho- 
nour and my own credit too much ; and whoso- 
ever gave the queen advice thus to write, is fitter 
for such base service than I am. Saving my 
duty to her majesty, I would I might have re- 
venge by my sword of any man that thus per- 
suadeth the queen to write to me." By advice 
of his friend Ormond, O'Neill fled from Dublin, 
made his way, with some risk, through the Pale, 
for Russell had been drawing a cordon around 
him, escaped to the North, and prepared to stand 
on his defence. 

It was about this time ( i 594) that Captain Tho- 
mas Lee drew up the celebrated ?7ie mortal addressed 
to Queen Elizabeth, and intended to inform her 
how her servants in Ireland executed the trust 
committed to them. Lee had commanded some 
troops himself in various posts on the frontiers of 
Ulster during Fitzwilliam's administration ; and 
he indignantly describes the many villanies and 
cruelties of that officer and his creatures ; but the 
most remarkable feature in the production is the 
strong affection which the writer manifests for 
O'Neill. O'Neill is his hero: in assertion of 
O'Neill's loyalty and truth, honest Lee is read^' 
(perhaps rashly) to lay down his life. *' If hb 
were so bad as they would fain enforce (as many 
a? know him and the strensth of his country will 
witness thus much witli me,) he might very easily 
out off many of your majesty's forces which are 



LIFE OF HUGH o'neILL. 107 

laid in garrisons, in small troops, in divers parts 
bordering upon his country ; yea, and over-run 
all your English Pale to the utter ruin thereof; 
yea, and camp, as long as should please him un- 
der the walls of Dublin, for any strength your 
majesty yet hath in that kingdom to remove him. 

" These things being considered, and how un- 
willing he is (upon my knowledge) to be otherwise 
towards your majesty than he ought, let him (if it 
so please your highness) be somewhat hearkened 
unto, and recovered if it may be, to come in unto 
your majesty to impart his own griefs, which no 
doubt he will do, if he will like his security. 
And then, I am persuaded, he will simply ac- 
knowledge to your majesty how far he hath 
offended you ; and besides, notwithstanding his 
protection, he will, if it so stand with your ma- 
jesty's pleasure, offer himself to the marshal (who 
hath been the chiefest instrument against him) 
to prove with his sword that he hath most 
wrongfully accused him. And because it is no 
conquest for him to overthrow a man ever held 
in the world to be of most cowardly behaviour, 
he will, in defence of his innocency, allow his 
adversary to come armed, against him naked, to 
encourage him the rather to accept of his chal- 
lenge. I am bold to say thus much for the earl, 
because I know his valour, and am persuaded he 
will perform it."* 

This cartel took no effect : but it was plain 
that O'Neill would soon liave an opportunity of 
meeting his enemy, if not in listed field, yet ia 

* Lee's Memorial, 



108 ijitrH OF HUGH O^EIUU 

open melee of battle : for news arrived m the 
North, that large reinforcements were on their 
way to the Deputy from England, consisting of 
veteran troops who had fought in Bretagne and 
Flanders, under Sir John Norreys, the most ex- 
perienced general in Elizabeth's service ; and 
that garrisons were to be forced upon Ballyshan- 
non and Belleek, commanding the passes into 
Tyrconnell, between Lough Erne and the sea. 
The strong fort of Portmo.-e also, which O'Neill 
had permitted to be built on the southern bank 
of the Blackwater, was to be strengtliened and 
well manned ; thus forming, with Newry and 
Greencastle, a chain of forts across the island, 
and a bilsis for future operations against the Irish 
country to the Forth. 

And now it was very clear that, let King Phi- 
lip send his promised help, or not send it, open 
and vigorous resistance must be made to the fur- 
ther progress of foreign power, or Ulster would 
soon be an English province. The nortliern con- 
federacy too, that great labour of O'Neill's lite, 
was now strong and firmly united. Even Mac 
Gennis and O'Hanlon, two chiefs Avho liad long 
been under the influence of Bagnal, were in the 
ranks of their countrymen, and O'Neill gave his 
daughter to the chieftain of Iveagii, his sister to 
liira of Orier. In Leinster, the O'Byrnes, the 
O'Cavanaghs, and Walter Fitzgerald (surnamed 
RiagJi) had entered into close alliance with 
O'Neill, and were already wasting the borders of 
the Pale : and O'Donnell and Mac Gwire were 
in arms, impatient for the chief of Tyr-owen 



WFE OF HUGH O NEILL. 109 

to lift his banner and take his rightful post in the 
van ot embattled Ulster. 

At last the time had come ; and Dungannon, 
with stern joy, beheld unfurled the royal standard 
of O'Neill, displaying, as it floated proudly on the 
breeze, that terrible Red Right Hand upon its 
snow white folds ; waving defiance to the Saxon 
queen, dawning like a new Aurora upon the 
awakened children of Heremon. 

With a strong body of horse and foot O'Neill 
suddenly appeared upon the Blackwater, stormed 
Portmore, and drove away its garrison, "as care- 
fully," says an historian, " as he would have 
driven poison from his heart ;" then demolished 
the fortress, burned down the bridge, and ad- 
vanced into O'Reilly's country, everywhere 
driving the English and their adherents before 
him to the South, (but without wanton blood- 
shed, slaying no man save in battle ; for cruelty 
is no where charged against O'Neill ; and finally, 
with Mac Gwire and Mac Mahon, he laid close 
siege to Monaghan, which was still held for the 
Queen of England. 

O'Donnell, on his side, crossed the Saimer at 
the head of his fierce clan, burst into Connaught, 
and shutting up Bingham's troops in their strong 
places at Sligo, Ballymote, Tulsk, and Boyle, 
traversed the country, with avenging fire and 
sword, putting to death every man ivho could 
speak no Irish ;* ravaging their lands, and send- 

* See Mac Geoghegan. Some writers say '* all Protes- 
tants;" but as all the Protestants then in Connaught 
were foreigners, and aU the foreigners were hostile in 



110 LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL- 

iiig the spoil to Tyr-connell. Then he crossed 
the Shannon, entered the Annally's, where O'Fer- 
gbal was living under English dominion, and de- 
vastated that country so furiously that " the whole 
firmanent," says tlie chronicle, " was one black 
cloud of smoke."* 

Not having sufficient force to meet the confe- 
derates in the field, Russell had recourse, for the 
present, to negotiation ; and while O'Neill lay 
before Monaghan he received intelligence that a 
certain Sir Henry Wallop, who was styled 
" treasurer at war," accompanied by Sir Richard 
Gardiner, the queen's chief justice, had arrived 
in Dundalk, as commissioners, to confer with the 
Irish chiefs. They summoned O'Neill, by his 
Saxon title of Earl of Tyr-owen, and the other 
leaders, according to their rank, to attend them 
at Dundalk, as English subjects, and state their 
"grievances" there. But O'Neill haughtily re- 
fused to see these commissioners, save at the head 
of his army, or to enter any walled town as a 
liege man of the Queen of England ; " For be it 
known unto thee, Wallop, that the Prince of 
Ulster, on his own soil, does homage to no foreign 
monarch : and for your ' earls of Tyrone' — earl 
me no earls ; — my foot is on my native heath, 
and my name The O'Neill ""f So they met in the 

raders, it is invidious and unjust to designate the suf- 
ferers in these wars by their sectarian appellation. 

* ]\rS. Life of O'Donnell. 

f " My foot is on my native heath, and my name Is 
Mac Gregor." The writer gladly acknowledges a pla- 
giarism from the Ked Gregarach : and further admits 
that the above may not have been the very words of 
O'Neill's message ; but it was to that effect. 



LIFE OP HUGH O'NEILL. Ill 

cpen plain, in presence of both armies ; and O'Neill 
demanded, as the first condition of a peace, that 
no garrisons or sheriffs should for the future be 
sent into any part of Ulster, save to Newry and 
Carrickfergus ; — that no attempt at religious per- 
secution, or, as the English called it, " reforma- 
tion," should be made in the North ; and finally, 
that Marshal Bagnal should be restrained from 
encroaching upon the Irish territory, or the juris- 
diction of its chiefs, and also be compelled to pay 
him, O'Neill, one thousand pounds of silver, as a 
mari-iage portion with the lady whom he had 
raised to the digity of an O'Neill's bride. O'Don- 
nell made the same demands, as to garrisons and 
Bhei'iffs, and freedom of religion ; and further 
complained of his treacherous abduction and 
severe imprisonment, and of a certain " Queen's 
O'Donneir who presumed to claim his chief- 
taincy by "English tenure." Their terms, in 
short, were, that all pretence of English inter- 
ference with the North should forthwith cease.* 
The queen's commissioners pretended to con- 
sider some of these conditions reasonable : others 
they " referred" to her majesty ; but when they 
came to propose certain terms to the confederates, 
HS a kind of temporary arrangement, until the 
.queen's pleasure should be known, — as that they 
should lay down their arms, beg forgiveness for 
their '* rebellion," discover their correspondence 
with foreign states, and the like ; the chiefs re- 
jected their proposals with scorn : in Moryson's 
phraseology, " the rebels grew insolent ;" and the 

' Moryson. 



112 LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILL. 

conference was hastily broken off, O'Neill having 
agreed only to a short truce. The English de- 
puty and his lawyers, seeing they could do no 
better, on the 3rd of September in the same year 
(1595) solemnly empanelled 2, jury to try O'Neill 
and his allies, for what they termed " high trea- 
son.'* The chiefs of the North, in their absence, 
were, with the utmost gravity, given in charge to 
this tribunal, which speedily found them all 
guilty: and O'Neill, O'Donnell, O'Ruarc, Mac 
GAvire, and Mac Mahon were forthwith pro- 
claimed " traitors." 

O'Neill well knew that, notwithstanding the 
overtures of peace, Norreys and Russell were 
actively engaged in preparing for war. Bagnal, 
about the beginning of June, had marched with 
a strong force from Newry into Mac Mahon*3 
country, relieved Monaghan, and compelled the 
Irish to raise the siege, and, shortly after, the 
deputy and General Norreys made good their 
march from Dundalk to Armagh after a severe 
skirmish with some Irish troops at the Moyry 
pass.* On the approach of these forces, O'Neill 
burned down Dungannon and the neighbouring 
villages, and retired into the woods, hoping by 
the show of terror and hasty retreat to draw the 
enemy further into the difficult country, and de- 
stroy them at his leisure. But Russell contented 

* Near Mount-Norris, county Armagh. Norreys after- 
wards built a fort, to command this pass, and called it 
by his own name. This district Avas at that time much 
encumbered by woods aivi bogs, but it was the only prac- 
ticable passage from Dundalk northward, except round 
the coast at Carliiigford. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILL. 113 

himself with stationing a garrison at Armagh, 
and returned to Dublin, leaving the Northern 
forces under the command of Norreys. 

The castle of Monaghan, which had been 
taken by Con O'Neill, was now once more in the 
hands of the enemy, and once more was besieged 
by the Irish troops. Norreys, with his whole 
force, was in full march to relieve it ; and O'Neill, 
who had hitherto avoided pitched battles, and 
contented himself with harassing the enemy by 
continual skirmishes, in their march through the 
woods and bogs, now resolved to meet this re- 
doubted general fairly in the open field. He 
chose his ground at Clontibret,* about five miles 
from Monaghan, where a small stream runs 
northward through a valley enclosed by low hills. 
On the left bank of this stream the Irish, in bat- 
tle array, awaited the approach of Norreys. We 
have no account of the numbers on each side, 
but when the English general came up he thought 
himself strong enough to force a passage. Twice 
the English infantry tried to make good their 
way over the river ; and twice were beaten back, 
their gallant leader, each time, charging at their 
head, and being the last to retire.f The general 
and his brother. Sir Thomas, were both wounded 
in these conflicts ; and the Irish counted the vic- 
tory won, when a chosen body of English horse, 

• Cluain-tiburaid, "the lawn of the spring." 
f Regii bombardarii bis a Catholicis confutati sunt, 
reclamante Norrise, qui ultimus omnium pugna excede- 
bat." — O'SuUivan. The Irish historians always do jus- 
tice to the valour, good faith, and generosity of this 
general. 

H 



114 JLIFE OF HUGH o'nEII.L.. 

led on by Segrave, a Meathian officer, of gigantic 
bone and height, spurred fiercely across tint river, 
and charged the cavalry of Tyr-owen, commanded 
by their prince in person. Segrave singled out 
O'Neill, and the two leaders laid lance in rest for 
deadly combat, while the troops on each side 
lowered their weapons and held their breath, 
awaiting the shock in silence. The warriors 
met, and the lance of each was splintered on the 
other's corslet : but Segrave again dashed his 
horse against the chief, flung his giant frame upon 
his enemy, and endeavoured to unhorse him by 
the mere weight of his gauntletted hand. O'Neill 
grasped him in his arms, and the combatants 
rolled together, in that fatal embrace, to the 
ground : — 

** Now, gallant Saxon ! hold thine own : — 
No maiden's arms are round thee thrown." 

There was one moment's deadly wrestle, and a 
death-groan : the shortened sword of O'Neill was 
buried in the Englishman's groin beneath his 
mail. Then from the Irish ranks arose such a 
wild shout of triumph as those hills had never 
echoed before : — the still thunder-cloud burst 
into a tempest : — those equestrian statues became 
as winged demons : and with their battle-cry of 
Lamh-dearg-aboo, and their long lances poised, 
in Eastern fashion, above their heads, down swept 
the chivalry of Tyr-owen upon the astonished 
ranks of the Saxon. The banner of St. George 
wavered and went down before that furious 
charge. The English turned their bridle-reins, 
and fled headlong over the stream, leaving the 



U5 

field covered with tJieir dead, and, worse than all, 
leaving with the Irish that proud red-cross ban- 
ner, the first of its disgraces in those Ulster 
wars.* Norreys hastily retreated southwards, 
and the castle of Monaghan was yielded to the 
Irish. 

Hugh Roe O'Donnell was by this time master 
of all Connaught, except a few forts : but George 
Bingham, who commanded for the queen in the 
castle of Sligo, knowing that the Mac Swynes 
were in O'Donneli's army, and that the coasts of 
Tyr-connell must be lying open to any sudden 
descent, and having heard of the riches of Rath- 
mullen priory, bethought himself of an expedi- 
tion worthy of the pirate Danes from whom he 
derived his race. He fitted out two vessels, filled 
them with armed men, and leaving Sligo to be 
kept in his absence by Ulick Burke, sailed round 
the northern coast, entered Lough S willy, plun- 
dered and destroyed the village of Rathmullan 
and the cloisters of the Carmelites, robbing the 
monks of their plate, their vestments, and sacred 
relics ; — then on his way back to Sligo he landed 
on Tory Island, " a place blessed," says a chro- 
nicler, " by the holy Columba," illustrious then 
with its seven churches and the glebe of the 
saint : and the English burned and ruined both 
houses and churches, plundered everything, ac- 
cording to their wont, carried off the flocks and 

• '* Circum Sedgreium octodecim equites splendidi 
regii succumbunt, et sign urn capitur." — O' Sullivan. For 
tlie mode of charging used by the Irish cavalry, witJi 
their lances poised over the right shoulder, see Spenser's 
View. 



lib LIFE OP HUGH 0'KEILI« 

herds, and left no four-footed beast on the whole 
island. Tory never recovered from that hideous 
wreck. It is now a bare and dismal rock, lashed 
by the howling Atlantic, and inhabited by a few 
wretched fishermen ; but still, by the ruins of a 
round tower, by its two stone crosses, and tiie 
mouldering walls of its many churches, attests 
the piety of the holy men who, in days of old, 
made a sanctuary of that lonely isle. 

The English pirate returned with his booty to 
Sligo ; but the division of the spoil caused a jea- 
lousy in the garrison between the English and 
Irish ; which ended in Ulick Burke and his ad- 
herents falling upon and exterminating the Sax- 
ons and their leader, and then delivering up the 
place to 0*Donnell. The castle of Ballymote 
was about the same time taken by Red Hugh 
from Sir Richard Bingham and given to its right- 
ful owners, the Mac Doncughs ; so that, on the 
whole, at the close of the year 1595, the Irish 
power predominated both in Ulster and Con- 
naught. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILIi. 117 



CHAPTEK IX. 

NEGOTIATIONS — TTEKELL's PASS — DKOM- 
FliUICH. 

A. D. 1595—1597. 

During the following winter the two parties re- 
mained inactive : and what we find chiefly inter- 
esting, is the warm attachment which General 
Norreys conceived for O'Neill, the man whom he 
had it in command to reduce by fire and sword. 
He convinced himself that the chief had been 
heavily wronged, recommended him to the favour- 
able consideration of his government ; and would 
answer it with his life that kindness and justice 
would make this formidable chieftain one of the 
queen's best subjects. The strange fascination 
of O'Neill's character had captivated the soldier- 
like and generous Norreys ; and instead of vigo- 
rously prosecuting the war, he was devising 
means to bring about a reconciliation between 
the revolted " earl" and his oifonded sovereign. 
There is reason to fear that the politic Hugh misled 
this straightforward soldier, to gain time for his 
own projects and his negotiations with Spain ;— i 
a supposition which is strengthened by his deal- 
ings with the queen's envoys in the following 
year. 



lis LIFE OF HUGH o'NFII.X* 

For the English government, finding that nu 
progress was made in reducing Ulster by force 
of arms, directed a commission to the general 
along with Sir George Bonrcliier, styled Master 
of the Ordnance, and Sir Geoffrey Fenton, com- 
manding them to invite the Northern chiefs to a 
conference, and propose terms of peace. The 
commissioners wrote to O'Neill requesting a 
meeting at Dundalk ; and though well aware that 
it was to his own successes he owed these friendly 
dispositions of the Englisli court, which would 
last only until they had an army in the field able 
to cope wit!i him ; yet, having objects of Iiis own 
to serve by delay, he proceeded to Dundalk, and 
declining, as usual, to enter a town, he held con- 
ference witli the English negotiators across a 
email river, O'Neill standing on the north bank 
and the commissioners on the south. Here he 
assured them of his loyalty and his desire to be 
treated as a good subject of the queen, provided 
only that the laws, customs, and religion of the 
Irish country shoidd remain inviolate ; (a pro- 
viso which included precisely the old demands of 
exemption from sheriffs, bishops, judges, and 
'• reforn.ation ;") and upon those, terms lu, pro- 
tested that her majesty would have no more de* 
voted subject than he.* As for holding com- 

* Moryson wonltl have ns lielieve that both at th=.s 
confeienco and several others O'Neill made the most ab- 
ject prot stv. ions ol' rep utance ami submission, cravin*'- 
jKirdoM on his knee« lor his "rebdlioii, ' But no IrisK 
Jnstorian says anyrhin<>- of this: ;;nd it is hardly proba- 
ble thft, j.ller such brilliant victoricis he would so hum- 
ble himself to those who were entreating for peace. Tlie 



LUT. OF HUGH ONEILL. IIQ 

mianications with Spain, he denied it altogetlier : 
but he much feared that Hugh O'Donnell was a 
disaffected person, and engaged in some treason- 
able correspondence ; for he was credibly in- 
formed that a ship had arrived from Spain in ono 
of the ports of Tyr-connell.* 

The commissioners were delighted by his zeal 
and candour, communicated with their govern- 
ment, and were immediately vested with full 
power to conclude a final peace with O'Neill upon 
easy terms ; and then it was hoped they should 
eoon be able, by his help, to deal with that pestilent 
O'Donnell. So they wrote again to O'Neill, ap- 
pointing another meeting at Dundalk, on the 
second of April, which he " accepted," says Mo- 
ryson, " with shew of joy ;" but when the second 
of April arrived, and the commissioners waited 
for him at the place of meeting, he did not con- 
descend to appear. Apparently his end had been 
answered, and he was not yet ready to assume his 
new character of a loyal subject. Yet, unwilling 
to abandon their mission, the English diploma- 
Abbe Mac Geoghegan says, vith some reason, ** Les 
Anglois conviennent qu' on desiroit fort la paix avec 
O'Neill : niais ils ajoutent que ee Prince et les autres 
chefs des Catholiques Irlandois avoient coutume de div 
mander pardon a genoux aux commissaires charges de 
leur proposer la paix : Ceux qui soUicitent la paix sont 
ordinairement plus dans le cas de demander pardon que 
les autres." 

* In this year, as we karn from the MS. Life of 
O'Donnell, Alonzo Copis came to that chief from Spain, 
bringing arms and ammunition : and Red Hugh sent 
him home with his ship well stored with "fat bucks and 
M hite-fleeced slieen." 



120 LIFE OF HUGH O'NKILL. 

tists once more plied him with letters, and ap- 
pointed yet another day, the I6th of April; when 
they conjured him by all his hopes of pardon, and 
his duty to her most sacred majesty, that he 
should not fail to attend them. The I6th came, 
and the commissioners looked anxiously north- 
ward from Faughart hill, in vain ; the chief did 
not arrive ; but the next day, as if to make a scorn- 
ful jest of their mean solicitation,* sent them his 
reasons, "justifying," says Moryson, "his relapse 
into disloyalty ;" for that the truce had not been 
duly kept with him and his people ; causes of 
offence had arisen at the Blackwater ; and more- 
over the Marshal had not restored some cattle 
which had been driven off the lands of a certain 
O'Neill. And under these circumstances, how 
could a prudent chieftain lay down his arms, or 
abandon the guardianship of his faithful clans- 
men ? 

Possibly these reasons may have seemed frivo- 
lous to the commissioners ; more especially as it 
was notorious that O'Neill was improving the in- 
tervals of truce in arming and training more 
troops, in strengthening his alliances, and stirring 
up the Irish of Leinster to invade the Pale ; for 
at this time we find that " Fiach Mac Hugh,'* 
jays Moryson, " breaking his protection, entered 
into acts of hostilitie ; and he, together with the 
O'Mores, O'Connors, O'Byrnes, O'Tooles, the 
Cavanaghs, Butlers, and the chiefs names of 
Connaught, animated by the success of the Ulster 

* " A mean solicitation on the part of government t^ 
Tyrone." — Leland. 



liTPE OF HUGH o'NEHili. 121 

men, combined together, and demanded to have 
the barbarous titles of O and Mac, together itntJi 
lands they claimed, to be restored to them, in 
the meanwhile spoiling all the country on all 
sides." These Leinster Irish were led princi- 
pally by Owen O'More and Fiach O'Byrne. 
Their inroads were fierce and bloody; the smoke 
of their burnings darkened the air of Dublin;* 
and there needed large forces to guard the fron- 
tiers of the Pale, and sleepless watch and ward 
upon the city wall. But now the deputy resolved 
to make another effort against the mountain septs 
of Wicklow. In the month of May he pene- 
trated with a strong force into the glens; took 
the fort of BaUinacor by suri^rise, and put its in- 
mates to the sword, including the gallant chief of 
the O'Byrnes, who had so long held those fast- 
nesses against the utmost efforts of English 
power. He left, however, two sons, Phelim and 
Raymond, who received some troops from Hugh 
O'Neill to assist them, joined with the O'Mores, 
recovered the glens and mountains of their tribe, 
and still kept the field against the stranger. At 
this time, also, Hugh O'Donnell was pressing the 
English hard in Connaught, detaching the chiefs 
from foreign alliances, and combining them in the 
national confederacy. Mac Dermot of Moy-luiug 
he compelled to make submission to himself as an 
Uriaght or tributary chief; "as with those of his 
X>lace it was always customary, "f And over Clan- 



* "The village of Crumlin was plundered and 
burned down, within two miles of the city." — Cox. 



t MS. Life of O'Donnell. Moryson says " all Con- 
naught was in rebellion." 



122 i-iFE OF HUGH o'neill. 

rickarvie lie reinstated the Mac William, who had 
been supplanted by Theobald Burke, snrnamed, 
" of the Ships," supported by the English, and 
claiming his chieftaincy by English tenure." 

Armagh was still occupied by an English gar- 
rison : a strong force under command of Stafford 
was stationed there ; and General Norreys, with 
the main body of his troops, was encamped at 
Killoter church. On the expiration of the truce, 
O'Neill attacked this encampment with desperate 
fury ; and drove tlie English before him with 
heavy loss till they found shelter within the walls 
of Armagh.* Norreys left here five hundred 
men to reinforce Stafford, and himself retired to 
] )undalk ; leaving the whole country northward 
in possession of tlie Irish. O'Neill now resolved 
to recover the city of Armagh. He cut off* all 
communication between Norreys and the town, 
sat down before it, and began a regular siege ; 
but tlie troops of Ulster were unused to a war of 
posts, and little skilled in reducing fortified 
places by mine, blockade, or artillery. They bet- 
ter loved a rushing charge in the open field, or 
the guerilla warfare of the woods and mountains ; 
and soon tired of sitting idly before battlements 
of stone. O'Neill tried a stratagem. General 
Norreys had sent a quantity of provisions to re- 
lieve Armagh under a convoy of three companies 
of foot and a body of cavalry ; and the Irish had 
surprised these troops by night, captured the 
fctores, and made prisoners of all the convoy. 
O'Neill caused the English soldiers to be stripped 

* O'SulUvan. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 123 

of their uniform, and an equal number of his 
own men to be dressed in it, whom he ordered 
to appear by day-break, as if marching to relieve 
Armagh. Then having stationed an ambuscade 
before morning in the walls of a ruined monas- 
tery lying on the eastern side of the city, he sent 
another body of troops to meet the red-coated 
galloglasses ; so that when day dawned, the 
defenders of Armagh beheld what they imagined 
to be a strong body of their countrymen in full 
march to relieve them with supplies of provisions : 
then they saw O'Neill's troops rush to attack 
these ; and a furious conflict seemed to proceed ; 
but apparently the English were overmatched : 
many of them fell, and the Irish were pressing 
forward, pouring in their shot, and brandishing 
their battle-axes, with all the tumult of a heady 
fight. The hungry garrison could not endure this 
sight. A strong sallying party issued from the 
city, and rushed to support their friends; but 
when they came to the field of battle all the com- 
batants on both sides turned their weapons 
against them alone. The English saw the snare 
that had been laid for them, and made for the 
walls again ; but now Con O'Neill and his party 
issued from the monastery and barred their re- 
treat. They defended themselves gallantly, but 
were all cut to pieces, and the Irish entered 
Armagh in triumph. Stafford and the remnant 
of his garrison were allowed to retire to Dundalk, 
and O'Neill, who wanted no strong places, dis- 
mantled the fortifications and then abandoned 
the town. Soon after this, however, in O'Neill's 
ebsence, some English troops from Newry or 



124 L^-^K OF liUGH O'NEILL. 

Dundalk made their way to Armagh — fortified it 
again— and held it till after the battle of tlw 
Yellow Ford. 

In May 1597, Russell was recalled from Ire- 
land, and Lord De Burgh sent over as deputy. 
Norreys also was instantly dismissed from his 
northern command, and sent to govern the Eng- 
lish forces in Munster ; where he shortly aftei 
sickened and died, broken-hearted, it was said, 
at being superseded by De Burgh, who was his 
personal enemy ; and also by the ill treatment to 
which he had been subjected by Russell ; for this 
Deputy was jealous of the general's high reputa- 
tion, and of the ample powers which had been 
vested in him ; and never lost an opportunity of 
thwarting his plans and crippling his resources.* 

The new Lord Deputy was a man of determi- 
nation and experience in war, having commanded 
in the Netherlands against Spain, and done good 
service there. 

The greater part of the island was now in 
the power of the Irish. In Ulster especially 
the English had not a foot of land save what 
was enclosed by the walls of seven castles, 
Newry, Carrickfergus, Dundrum, Carlingford, 
Greencastle, Armagh, and Olderfleet, (now 
called Larne,)f and De Burgh's instructions 
were to prosecute the northern war vigorously, 
to enter upon no conferences and listen to no 
terms. A truce, however, of one month was 

* The Abbe Mac Geoghegan notes (as a jufJgraent of 

. heaven) that poor Norreys died, loaded with disgrace, in 

the very country which had given birth to St. Kumold, 

first bishop and patron of Malines, whose relics he had 

profiled in the Low Countries. 

tJMorvRon. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'neILL. 125 

agreed upon, and the time was used by the De- 
j)uty in collecting his forces and planning opera- 
tions : neither was that interval altogether wasted 
by O'Neill ; as we shall presently see. 

At the close of the truce, attended by the 
Karl of Kildare and Lord Trimbleston, the De- 
puty marched northwards by Newry and Ar- 
magh, while Sir Conyers Clifford, who now com- 
manded for the queen in Connaught, was ordered 
to penetrate into Ulster by the western shores of 
Lough Erne. A thousand men of the Anglo- 
Irish of Meath had assembled at Mullingar, and 
were also destined for the North under command 
of young Barnewall, a son of Lord Trimbleston : 
and to prevent the junction of all these forces 
was plainl}^ the thing most desirable for O'Neill. 
Now there was in the Irish army a gentleman of 
English descent, by name Richard Tyrrell, of 
Fertullagh, in the district of Meath, a zealous 
Catholic, and one of O'Neill's most trusted friends 
and bravest officers. He was instantly detached, 
at the head of four hundred chosen men, to 
watch the movements of the Meathians ; a ser- 
vice for which Tyrrell was well fitted by his ac- 
tivity and knowledge of the country. Barnewall 
and his troops marched from Mullingar ; and 
when he heard of the small number of TyrrelFs 
band, which was then posted in his neighbour- 
hood, he resolved to attack it without delay and 
sweep it from his path. Tyrrell retired before 
Lim till he arrived at a defile winding between 
thick woods, being precisely the spot which he 
had marked out for the destruction of his enemy. 
Here he placed a part of his band in ambush 



126 LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

under O'Connor, his lieutenant ; and himself re- 
treated still furtlier to draw the English onward 
into the pass. They rushed impetuously forward, 
and the moment they had all passed the ambus- 
cade, O'Connor sounded a charge and attacked 
them fiercely in the rear, while Tyrrell on the 
same instant wheeled round and engaged them 
in front. The whole Meathian detachment was 
hewn to pieces ; and it is said that besides Bariie- 
wall, who was reserved as a prisoner for O'Neill, 
only one man escaj^d through a neighbouring 
bog, to carry tlie news to Mullingar.* O'Connor 
so fiercely plied his sword that day, that his hand 
swelled within the guard and had to be extricated 
in the evening by means of a file. The place of 
battle received the name of Tyrrell's-pass, and 
Btill preserves the memory of that slaughter, 

Tyrrell and O'Connor lost not a day in march- 
ing to join O'Neill : for by this time Lord De 
Burgh was as far north as Armagh ; and they 
counted upon warm work at the Blackwater. 

But before the two main bodies met, we have 
to tell how it fared with SirConyers Clifford and 
his Connaught levies. He set forth with seven 
hundred men, and was to make his way north- 
ward by Ballyshannon and join the Deputy at 
Portmore. But on that side the passes into Ul- 
ster were under the sj>ecial caie of Red Hugh 
O'Donnell : and before Clifford had proceeeded 
far he found himself in front of a body of two 
thousand of the Clan-Conal (" two thousand des- 
perate rebels," as the English historians call 

* Mac GeoThegaa. 



I.TFE OF HUGH o'nETLL. 127 

them), and perceiving that he was overmatclied 
he thouglit it best to retire. For thirty miles he 
retreated through the mountains, in good order 
and with but little loss, and made good his way 
back to (3onnaught in the face of a superior ene- 
my.* For that time he escaped the sword of 
Red Hugh : but, in a certain pass amongst those 
mountains of north Connaught, these two warriors 
were to meet once more, and there to do and suffer 
what their fate decreed. From pursuing Clifford, 
O'Donnell hastened back to join O'Neill where 
the brunt of battle was to be borne. 

O'Neill knew that Lord De Burgh would di- 
rect his efforts to recover the fortress of Port- 
more, and therefore had entrenched a part of his 
army in a pass of the woods near the southern 
bank of the Blackwater, and right in the path 
of the English army, where, *' to the natural 
strength of the place," says Moryson, " was 
added the art of interlacing the low boughs, anvl 
casting the bodies of trees across the way." De 
Burgh instantly attacked and forced this pass, 
drove the Irish northward across the river, took 
possession of Portmore fort, and garrisoned it. 
Their prayers and thanksgivings for this success 
were interrupted by calling to arms ; and on the 
left bank of the river they saw the Irish issuing 
from their woods, and taking up a position be- 
tween Portmore and Benburb,f as if bent to re- 
new the battle. Tlie Earl of Kildare was sent 



• Moryson. 

f Beinn-Boirh, the ♦'Hill-brow." — Stuart's Historj 
of Armagh. 



I2S LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILL. 

forward to attack them ; and was shortly after 
supported bj De Burgh, with his whole arcy 
I'hey pressed forward, and after some severe 
skirmishes, had advanced a mile beyond Ben- 
biirb, when they found themselves in front of the 
chosen troops of Tyr-owen and Tyr-connell, 
led by their chieftains in person, and supported 
by the Antrim Scots under James Mac Donnell 
of the Glynns ; and it was now plain that O'Neill 
had purposely decoyed them across the river that 
he might engage them according to his wont, on 
his own chosen battle-ground. The Lord Deputy, 
however, attacked them gallantly, and was mor- 
tally wounded in the beginning of the conflict, 
and carried off the field. Kildare took the com- 
mand, but he also was struck down from hit> 
horse, and his two foster-brothers, in rescuing 
him from the press of battle were slain by his 
side. The English were routed with terrible 
slaughter : great numbers were drowned or cut 
to pieces in their flight ; and amongst the slain, 
besides Lord De Burgh, were several officers of 
distinction, Sir Francis Vaughan, brother-in-law 
to the Lord Deputy, Thomas Waller and Robert- 
Turner. Kildare also died in a few days of his 
wounds, or, as English historians will have it, of 
grief for the death of his foster-brethren. That 
battle-field is called Drumfluich ; it lies about 
two miles westward from Blackwater-town, 
(Portmore) ; and Battleford-bridge marks the 
epot where the English reddened the river in 
their flight.* 

* The authorities for this battle are O'SulHvan, Mac 



LIFE OF HUGH o'neILL. 129 

The Queen's army retreated with all speed to 
Newry, and so to the Pale, leaving the garrison 
they had stationed in Portmore unsupported in 
flie midst of a hostile country. Captain Williams, 
however, who commanded there, caused the de- 
fences to be speedily made up, and maintained 
himself bravely for a long time against all the 
efforts of O'Neill's troops. 

Geogrhegan, the MS. Life of O'Donnell, Moryson, and 
Camden. There is more tlian usual discrepancy in tne 
several accounts, but all agree that Vaughan, Waller, 
and Turner, with many of tlie English troops, fell on 
the field ; that De Burgh and Kildare died very soon 
after, having been wounded in the battle ; and also that 
tlie English army retreated without attempting to pene- 
trate further ; though, as Moryson tells us, it was the 
express intention of 13e Burgh to march straight to 
Dungannon, a bold undertaking, he says, "which no 
other lord deputy had yet attempted." But the same 
Moryson, in describing the battle, ccolly says, the Eng- 
lish " prevailed against them." Leland tells us that De 
Burgh met with a " sudden death" on his way to Dun- 
gannon, and that Kildare died ot "affliction," — hardly 
a satisfactory account of the transaction. On the whoW, 
the present writer prefers to rely upon the uiiaiilmO'ii 
te&timouy of the Irish chroniclers. 



130 LIFE OV HUuU lyKEILL. 



CHAPTER X. 

o'keill receives the queen's gracious tab- 
don battlie of beal-an-atiia-buidhe. 

A. D. 1597—1598. 

Shortly after Lord De Burgh's death, the civil 
government of the Pale was committed to Loftus, 
Archbishop of Dublin, and Chief Justice Gar- 
diner. The Earl of Ormond, O'Neill's ancient 
friend and ally, was made Commander-in-chief 
ot the iiueen's army, with the title of L'^rd Lieu 
terant. Ormond had instructions co eonciuile t ' 
peace, if possible, with O'Neill ; ana a truce oi 
eight weeks was agreed upon between Hjem a 
the mean time. O'Neill and Ormond met at 
Dundalk to arrange the terms of a peace, and 
the chieftain stated the conditions on which he 
and his allies would consent to lay down their 
arms : — First, perfect freedom of religion, not 
only in Ulster, but throughout the island ; tlien, 
reparation for spoil and ravage done upon the 
Irish country by the garrisons of Newry and 
other places ; finally, entire and undisturbed 
control by the Irish chiefs over their own territo- 
ries and people.* These claims were to be trans- 
mitted to England ; and during the truce O'Neill 

* Moryson, Mac Gcoghegan. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILL. 131 

wa? to hold no commanication with Spain, to 
suffer no outrage by his soldiers in violation of 
the truce, to recall his troops from Leinster, to 
give safe conduct to English officers in going to 
and from the several castles, and tu permit his 
people to supply victuals to the fort of Portraoie. 
And on the other hand, Ormond engaged that 
the Northerns should be allowed free intercourse 
with the Pale, and that none of O'Neill's troops 
or confederates should be molested by the Eng- 
lish without his consent.* Moryson asserts that 
O'Neill began this conference by making the 
humblest professions of penitence, loyalty, and 
submission to the queen ; which cannot be true, 
being not only unsupported by other authorities, 
but altogether at variance with the chieftain's 
haughty demands, and his contemptuous treat- 
ment of the queen of England and her officers 
immediately after. At the end of the eiglit 
weeks' truce, authority arrived from the queen, 
giving Ormond power to offer her " gracious par- 
don" to O'Neill, on his engaging to comply with 
certain articles to the number of thirteen ; of 
which the principal were that he should break up 
the Northern confederacy, disband his forces, 
and send all foreigners out of his country ; that 
he should repair the Blackwater fort and bridge ; 
renounce the title of O'Neill, and all jurisdic- 
tion belonging to that cliieftaincy ; admit a sheriff 
into Tyr-owen ; pay a fine ; deliver up all trai- 
tors (that is all avIio should presume to profess 
the Catholic religion, or bear arras against the 

* Muiysou. 



i32 LIFE OF HUGH ©"NEII.!.. 

English) ; that he should discover his negotia- 
tions with Spain ; surrender into the hands of 
Ormond, Sliane O'Neill's two sons (whom he had 
kept in prison for many years), and finally give 
his own eldest son as a hostage for due perfor- 
mance of his engagements.* 

These were insolent terms to propose to a vic- 
torious sovereign prince at the head of his army ; 
and he rejected them with scorn. He could not 
think, he said, of abandoning his allies, nor would 
he send strangers out of his country, without safe 
conduct, nor deliver up those who sought refuge 
u^ith him for conscience sake : as for Shane 
O'Neill's sons, they were his prisoners, not Eli- 
zabeth's ; and for the name O'Neill, he would not 
nsist upon the authorities of the Pale addressing 
nim by that title ; they might, if they pleased, 
call him Earl of Tyr-owen ; but in Ulster he 
would, with their good leave, (or without it,) 
continue chief of his sept : and then the articles 
relating to English sheriffs, and the giving his 
son for a hostage, were wholly inadmissible : ra- 
ther than be pardoned upon these terms he would 
dispense with pardon altogether. 

Notwithstanding his contumacy, the gracious 
pardon was at Ormond's iti'gent entreaty duly 
made out and sealed with the great seal ; and 
tlie Lord Lieutenant now pressed him to accept 
It upon any terms ; the Irish should have ail 
Ulster, north from Dundalk,f without hostages, 
without tribute, without sherilfs : it was ail in 
vain ; the truce was out, and O'NeiU v«rus pre- 

* Moryson. + MS. Life of ODonnell. 



LIFE OF HUGH O^NMJLL. 133 

paring to besiege Armagli and Portmore. Yet, 
as -a last resource, this notable "gracious pardon" 
was sent, with its great seal, after him to tin 
North : but the haughty chieftain manifested a 
surprising indifference to the precious document, 
and '* continuing still his disloyal courses," says 
Moryson, " never pleaded the same" — which if 
seems it was needful to do — " so as upon his above' 
mentioned indictment in September, 1 795, you shall 
find him after outlawed in the year 1600." Mo- 
ryson is also precise as to the date of the pardon. 
It passed the great seal upon the 1 1th of April, 1598 
Indeed it must be acknowledged that all 
these negotiations for peace and for pardon 
were mere diplomacy on the part of O'Neill, 
who was well acquainted with the rapacious 
views of the English court, and only wished to 
prolong the truce in hopes of receiving Spanish 
succours he expected, that he might carry on the 
war with greater vigour. In the month of April, 
1597, a ship from Spain had arrived in Killybegs, 
" on the west side of the glen blessed by the holy 
Columba," as an Irish chronicler has it ; awd 
O'Donnell had entertained King Philip's envoys 
with distinction at Donegal, and presented them 
with hounds and Iforses.* We have no account 
of the arrangements made between them and the^ 
northern chiefs ; but it seems unaccountable that 
Philip did not, about this time, give some efficient 
support to O'Neill and O'Donnell, who were so 
gallantly defending their country and religion 
against their and his deadliest enemy ; but some 
Irish historians account for this by the rumours 

• MS. life of O'Donnell. 



134 1.1FE OF HUGH O NEILL. 

Ji'hicli it was the policy of England to spread 
abroad throughout the Continent, of the low con- 
dition to which O'Neill had been reduced, care- 
fully concealing or denying the victories obtained 
by him and his allies, and representing every 
truce and conference as an abject " submission" 
to the queen. An agent, they say,* was em- 
ployed at Brussells to publish pretended submis- 
sions, treaties, and pardons ; so that the Spanish 
governor of Flanders might report to his master 
that the power of the Irish Catholics was broken 
and their cause wholly lost. And notwithstand- 
ing the frequent intercourse between Spain and 
Ireland, it seems that such representations must 
have had some effect; for O'Neill, during his 
whole contest received no effectual help from 
Spain ; and the foolish expedition to Kinsale, as 
we shall see, was rather an injury to his cause 
than an addition of strength. 

In the summer of this year, however, he seems 
to have thrown aside all reliance upon foreign 
aid, and to have organized his countrymen for q 
resolute stand, with all the powers of the Irish 
against their enemy. And it is worth while to 
know the proportions in which the various tribes 
of Ulster contributed to their national army : — Of 
the O'Neills, we find that Neal Bryan Fertough, 
in Upper Claneboy, furnished eighty foot and 
thirty horse ; Shane Mac Bryan, of Lower Clane- 
boy, sent eighty foot and fifty horse ; Mac Rory, 
of Kilwarlin, gave sixty foot-men and ten horse- 
men ; Shane Mac Brj'^an Carogh, from the Bann 

• Feter Lombard cited by Mac Geoghegan. 



LIFE OF HUGH 0*NEILL. 135 

side, fifty foot and ten horse ; Art O'Neill, three 
hundred foot and sixty horse ; Henry Oge 
O'Neill, two hundred foot and forty horse ; Tur- 
lough Mac Henry O'Neill, of the Fews, had 
three hundred foot and sixty horse ; Cormac 
Mac Baron* (Hugh's brother) three hundred 
foot and sixty horse ; O'Neill himself, of his 
own household troops had seven hundred foot 
and two hundred horse. Then White's coun- 
try (DufFerin in the district of Down) sent 
twenty foot-men ; Mac Artane and Sliaght 
O'Neill, also of Down, one hundred foot and 
twenty horse ; Mac Gennis of Iveagh, brought 
two hundred foot and forty horse ; Mac Muv- 
tough, from the Mein water, sent forty foot-men ; 
O'Hagan, of Tullogh-Oge, had one hundred foot 
and thirty horse ; James Mac Donnell, son of the 
yellow-haired Sorley, from the Route and the 
Seven Glynns of Antrim, led four hundred foot 
and one hundred horse ; Mac Gwire of Ferma- 
nagh, six hundred foot and one hundred horse ; 
Mac Mahon and Ebhir Mac Coolye of Farney 
(another Mac Mahon), contributed five hundred 
foot and one hundred and sixty horse ; O'Reilly 
ofBreffni O'Reilly, eight hundred f~o" and one 
hundred horse ; and O'CJahan from the snores ol 
Lough Foyle and tbp. bynks of the Bann and Roe 
led on five hundred fix>t and i^o hundred horse. 
All these chieftains were tributary to O'Neill.t 

* Son of the baron. Irish names were sometimes 
formed from the English titles of honour, as Mac tm 
Ear-as, children of the Earl of Clanrickarde. 

t The Mac Gwiies aud O'Heillys had formerly been 
Uriaghts of O'Doimeil. 



136 JLIFE OF HUGH 0*NEILL. 

Ficoi Tyr-connell, Red Hugh himself and hia 
broVher, brought three hundred and fifty foot, and 
one hundred and ten horse ; O'Doghertj of Inis' 
howen led three hundred foot and forty horse ; 
Mac Svvyne, live hundred foot and thirty horse ; 
O'Boyle one hundred foot and twenty horse ; and 
O'Gallagher of Ballyshannon two hundred foot 
and forty horse.* Hugh O'Neill and Red O'Don- 
nell led these two great divisions ; they seem to 
have been of equal rank and authority, and to 
have acted independently of each other, but always 
in harmony, and their only contest was which 
should pierce deepest into the columns of the 
Saxon. 

In the month of July O'Neill sent messengers 
to Phelim Mac Hugh, then chief of the O'Byrnes, 
that he might fall upon the Pale, as they were 
about to make employment in the North for the 
troops of Ormond ; and at the same time, he de- 
tatched fifteen hundred men and sent them to 
assist his ally, O'More, who was then besieging 
Porteloise,f a fort of the English in Leix. Then 
he made a sudden stoop upon the castle of Port- 
more, which, says Moryson, " was a great eye- 
sore to him, lying upon the cheefe passage into his 
country,'* hoping to carry it by assault. 

An eye-sore surely, brave O'Neill ! and' a 
heart- sorrow, is that accursed fortress of the 
Blackwater, bristling with Saxon spears — frown* 



* Moryson is the authority for these numbers. lie 
reckons in all of the Ulster troops 1,702 horsemen, auJ 
7,220 foot-soldiers. 

t Afterwards caked Maryborough. 



MFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 137 

ing over the green vales of Tyr-owen ; the far- 
thest step in the onward march of English power 
tcvards the ancient territories of the Kinel 
Eoghain. And bj the souls of Heber and Here- 
inon it shall be swept from the banks of that fair 
river — razed and abolished from the face of the 
earth, if there be right arms enough in all Ulster 
to cany it away stone by stone. 

Once and again he assayed to take it by 
Btorra : but the fort was powerfully manned and 
commanded by a skilful officer ; and without ar- 
tillery or the science of attacking fortified places, 
no progress could be made. The Irish assailed 
the place with desperate bravery, and tried to 
force their way by escalade : in vain ; — they 
were shot down or flung headlong from the mound 
and ramparts. The siege became a blockade ; 
and day after day, week after week, the Irish lay 
encamped around, and suffered nothing alive or 
dead to enter or to leave the walls ; grimly wait- 
ing till famine and hardship should do their work 
upon the garrison. In the mean time O'Neill 
had also invested Armagh, and formed an en- 
campment at MuUagh-bane, between that city and 
Newry, to prevent all relief coming from the 
South ; whilst his brother Cormac, with five hun- 
dred men, guarded the approaches near the be- 
leagured walls. 

Ormond now perceived that a powerful effort 
must be made by the English to hold their ground 
in the North, or Ulster might at once be aban- 
doned to the Irish. Strong reinforcemements 
were sent from England ; and O'Neill's spies 
soon brought him intelligence of large masses of 



138 LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 

troops moving northward, led by Marshal Sir 
Henry Bagnal, and composed of the choicest forces 
in the queen's service. Newry was their place 
of rendezvous ; and early in August, Bagnal 
found himself at the head of the largest and best 
appointed army of veteran Englishmen that had 
ever fought in Ireland. He succeeded in reliev- 
ing Armagh, and dislodging O'Neill from his 
encampment at MuUagh-bane ; where the chief 
himself narrowly escaped being taken ; and then 
prepared to advance, with his whole army, to the 
Blackwater, and raise the siege of Portmore. 
Williams and his men were by this time nearly 
famished with hunger : they had eaten all their 
horses, and had come to feeding on the herbs and 
grass that grew upon the walls and in the ditches 
of the fortress.* And every morning they gazed 
anxiously over the southern hills and strained 
their eyes to see the waving of a red-cross flag, 
or the glance of English spears in the rising sun. 
O'Neill hastily summoned O'Donnell and Mac 
William to his aid, -and determined to cross the 
marshal's path, and give him battle before he 
reached the Blackwater. His entire force, on 
the day of battle, including the Scots and the 
troops of Connaught and Tyr-connell, consisted 
of four thousand five hundred foot and six hun- 
dred horse, and Bagnal's army amounted to an 
equal number of infantry and five hundred vete- 
ran horsemen,! sheathed in corslets and head- 
pieces ; together with some field artillery, in 
which O'Neill was wholly wanting. And small 

* Moi^scn. t O'Sullivan. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nKILL. 139 

as these forces appear, they were the two largest 
armies, Irish against English, that had met upon 
this soil since Strongbow's invasion. In Bag- 
nal's ranks (a thing most unusual at that period) 
we find but one Irishman, Maelraorra O'Reillj, 
surnaraed "the Handsome," a disloyal traitor, 
who fought against his country and his lawful 
chieftain, and was not ashamed to call himself the 
queerCs O'B.eilly, 

Hugh Roe O'Donnell had snuffed the coming 
battle from afar, and on the 9th of August joined 
O'Neill with the clans of Connaught and Tyr- 
connell. They drew up their main body about a 
mile from Portmore, on the way to Armagh, 
where the plain was narrowed to a pass, enclosed 
on one side by a thick wood, and on the other 
by a bog. To arrive at that plain from Armagh 
the enemy would have to penetrate througli 
wooded hills divided by winding and marshy hol- 
lows, in which flowed a sluggish and discoloured 
stream from the bogs ; and hence the pass was 
called Beal-an-atha-buidhe, " the mouth of the 
yellow ford."* Fearfasa O'Clery, a learned poet 
of O'Donnell's, asked the name of that place, 
and when he heard it, remembered (and pro- 
claimed aloud to the army) that St. Bercan had 
foretold a terrible battle to be fought at a yellow 
ford, and a glorious victory to be won by the an- 
cient Irish. — Besides, are they not heretics, these 
English ? and hath not Moran the son of Maoiu 
said that *' Nought prevails in battle so powerfully 



* Or it may have been called yelloio from the eclour of 
the soil, which seems filled with ociire. 



140 LIFE OP HUGH o'lVEILL. 

es the Truth?"* Even so, Moran, son of Maoin! 
A nd for thee wisest poet, O'Clery ! thou hast this 
day served thy country well : for, to an Irish army, 
auguries of good were more needful than a com- 
missariat ; and their bards* songs, like the Do- 
rian flute of Greece, breathed a passionate valour 
that no blare of English trumpets could ever 
kindle. 

Bagnal's army rested that night in Armagh ; 
and the Irish bivouacked in the woods, each war- 
rior covered by his shaggy cloak, under the stars 
of a summer night : — for to " an Irish rebell," says 
Edmund Spenser, " the wood is his house against 
all weathers, and his mantle is his couch to sleep 
in." But O'Neill, we may well believe slept not 
that night away ; — the morrow was to put to 
proof what valour and discipline was in that 
Irish army which he had been so long organiz- 
ing and training to meet this very hour. Before 
him lay a splendid army of tried English troops, 
in full march for his ancient seat of Dungannon, 
and led on by his mortal enemy. And O'Neill 
would not have had that host weakened by the 
desertion of a single man, nor commanded — 
no, not for his white wand of chieftaincy — 
by any leader but this his dearest foe. Ah! 
never had he desired the love of Bagnal's 
sister with fonder eagerness than now his soul 
yearned for the heart's blood of her brother. He 
watched the east and longed for the grey of morn* 
big. 



MS. Life of 01)0 



I.IFE OF HUGH o'neill. l4l 

The tenth morning of August rose bright and 
serene upon the towers of Armagh and the silver 
waters of Avonmore. Before day dawned, the 
English army left the city in three divisions, aT)^ 
at sun-rise they were winding through the hills 
and woods behind the spot where now stands the 
little church of Grange. The sun was glanc- 
ing on the corslets and spears of their glitten 
ing cavalry ; their banners waved proudly, and 
their bugles rung clear in the morning air ;* 
when, suddenly, from the thickets on both sides 
of their path, a deadly volley of musketry swept 
through the foremost ranks. O'Neill had sta- 
tioned here five hundred light-armed troops to 
guard the defiles ; and in the shelter of thick 
groves of fir-trees they had silently waited for the 
enemy. Now they poured in their shot, volley 
after volley, and killed great numbers of the 
English : but the first division, led by Bagnal in 
person, after some hard fighting, carried the pass, 
dislodged the marksmen from their position and 
drove them backwards into the plain. The centre 
division under Cosby and Wingfield, and the 
rear-guard led by Cuin and Billing, supported in 
flank by the cavalry under Brooke, Montacute 
and Fleming,! now pushed forward, speedily 
cleared the difficult country and formed in the 
open ground in front of the Irish lines. " It was 

"Serene etgrato die, vexillis explicatis, tubarum 
clangore tibiarum concentu," &c. — 0' Sullivan. He is 
the only writer, Irish or foreign, who gives an intelli- 
gible account of O'Neill's battles ; but he was a sol- 
dier as well as a chronicler, 
t Camden Queen Eliz. 



142 LIFE OF HUGH O NEILL. 

not quite safe," says an Irish chronicler, (in admi- 
ration of Bagnal's disposition of his forces) '* to 
attack the nest of griffins and den of lions in 
which were placed the soldiers of London.'** 
Bagnal, at the head of his first division, and 
aided by a body of cavalry, charged the Irish 
light-armed troops up to the very entrenchments, 
in front of which O'Neill's foresight had pre- 
pared some pits, covered over with wattles and 
grass ; and many of the English cavalry rushing 
impetuously forward, rolled headlong, both men 
and horses, into these trenches and perished 
Still the Marshal's chosen troops, with loud cheers 
and shouts of " St. George, for merry England !*" 
resolutely attacked the entrenchments that 
stretched across the pass, battered them with 
cannon, and in one place succeeded, though with 
heavy loss, in forcing back their defenders. Then 
first the main body of O'Neill's troops was 
brought into action ; and with bagpipes sounding 
a charge, they fell upon the English, shouting 
their fierce battle-cries, Lamh-dearg ! and O'Don- 
nell Aboo ! O'Neill himself, at the head of a body 
of horse, pricked forward to seek out Bagnal 
amidst the throng of battle ;t but they never 
met: the marshal, who had done his devoir that day 
like a good soldier, was shot through the braii; 
by some unknown marksman : the division ho 
had led was ibrced back by the furious onslaught 
of the Irish, and put to utter rout ; and, what 



* MS. Life of O'Donnell. 

f " Tj^rone pricked forward with rage of envy and 
pottled rancour. " — Moruson . 



LIFE OF HUGH O NEILL. 143 

aJded to their confusion, a cart of gunpowder 
exploded amidst the English ranks and blew 
many Hjf their men to atoms. And now the ca- 
valry of Tyr-connell and Tyr-owen dashed into 
ttie plain and bore down the remnant of Brooke's 
and Fleming's horse : the columns of Wingfield 
and Cosby reeled before their rushing charge — 
while in front, to the war-cry of Bataillah- 
Aboo .'* the swords and axes of the heavy-armed 
galioglasses were raging amongst the Saxon 
ranks. By this time the cannon were all taken ; 
tlie cries of " St. George " had failed, or turned 
into death-shrieks ; and once more, England's 
royal standard sunk before the Red Hand of 
Tyr-owen. 

The last who resisted was the traitor O'Reilly : 
twice he tried to rally the flying squadrons but 
was slain in the attempt : and at last the whole of 
that fine army was utterly routed, and fled pell-mell 
towards Armagh, with the Irish hanging fiercely 
on their rear. Amidst the woods and marshes all 
connexion and order were speedily lost ; and as 
O'Donnell's chronicler has it, they were " pursued 
in couples, in threes, in scores, in thirties, and in 
hundreds," and so cut down in detail by their 
avenging pursuers. In one spot especially the 
carnage was terrible, and the country people yet 
point out the lane where that hideous rout passed 
by, and call it to this day the " Bloody Loaning.*' 
Two thousand five hundred English were slain in 

* "The cause of the noble Staff." War-cry of the 
Tyr-connell gallogrlasses, whose hereditary leader was 
one of the Mac Swyiies. — Ware Antiq. 



144 LIFE or HUGH o'neill, 

the battle and flight, inchiding twenty-three su- 
perior officers, besides lieutenants and ensigns. 
Twelve thousand gold pieces, thirty-four stan- 
dards, all the musical instruments and cannon, 
with a long train of provision waggons, were a 
rich spoil for the Irish army. The confederates 
had only two hundred slain and six hundred 
wounded.* 

Fifteen hundred English found shelter in the 
city, which was forthwith closely invested by the 
victorious Irish, and " for three days and three 
nights nothing passed in or out."']' On the fourth 
day they surrendered the place ; and although 
some of the chieftains would have taken cruel re- 
venge upon these unfortunate survivors of the 
battle, O'Neill's voice prevailed, and they were 
disarmed and sent in safety to the Pale. Port- 
more was instantly yielded and its garrison dis- 
missed with the rest. 

" Thus," says Camden, *' Tyr-owen triumphed 
according to his heart's desire over his adver- 
sary." All Saxon soldiery vanished speedily 
from the fields of Ulster, and the Bloody Hand 
once more waved over the towers of Newry and 
Armagh. 

* O'SuUivan. See also Mac Geoghegan aud MS. Life 
of O'Donnell. Moryson admits on the part of the Eng- 
lish only ] ,500 slain. The Irish piously buried all the 
dead — Irish Annals cited by Curry. 

t MS. Life of O'DonneU. 



liFE OF HUGH 0->EILL. 145 



CHAPTER XI. 

MUNSTER TAKES HEART. KEJ> HUGH IN CCN- 

NAUGHT. 

A. D. 1598—1599. 

High harping in Dungannon, and in the halls of 
Tyr-connell ; — and throughout broad Ulster frora 
the Glynns to Ath-Seanagh, from Dundalk to 
Derry-Calgach, there was feasting and jubilee, 
and the triumph-song of many a bard. Surely, 
ye sweet singers of Ulladh ! the second Hector — 
the heaven-sent Moses of your prayers, has at 
length arisen : — the children of the Scythic Eber 
Scot have returned ; and old Ireland is yet fated 
to rise out of the dust and ashes of Saxon-land.* 
The fame of this victory over the detested 
English was instantly spread abroad through all 
the island ; and O'Neill was celebrated every- 
where as the deliverer of his country and most, 
zealous champion of the Catholic religion. In thi«- 

• See the song of Fearflatha O'Gnive, a poet of Clan- 

hugh-buidhe, in Walker's Irish Bards "Is there no 

Hector left for the defence, for the recovery of Troy ? — 
It is thine, oh ! my God, to send us a second Muses : — 
thy dispensations are just : and unless the children of 
the Scythian Eber Scot return," &c. A translation of 
it by Callanan appears in the "Ballad Poetry of Ireland," 

12K 



146 I.IFE OF HUGH o'nEILJu, 

letter character he drew into the confederacy many 
lords of old English race, but Catholic in faith, 
who never would have been found in the Irish 
ranks, save to defend themselves from Elizabeth's 
persecuting Reformation. These two elements of 
resistance, therefore, national feeling and religious 
zeal, united against the queen of England : — the 
one party could not endure her political usurpa- 
tion, her judges, lords president and sheriffs; — 
the other abhorred her forced " Reformation," 
and her undertaking bishops. But every enemy 
of England, from what motive soever, was now 
O'NeiU's sworn brother, and looked to the victo- 
rious Northern chieftain as the sword and shield 
of their cause. All Leinster was in arms under 
O'Cavanagh, O'Byrne, and Owen Mac Rory 
O'More of licix, who had by this time, with the 
aid of O'Neill's auxiliary troops, expelled all Eng 
lish undertakers from his ancient territory (which 
they had prematurely named " the King's 
county,") and now his clansmen, with the moun- 
tain septs of Wicklow, were ranging through the 
Pale unopposed and levying tribute from the very 
vallej of the Liffey, while Ormond's English 
troops, utterly panic-stricken, shut themselves up 
in their forts and strong-holds, raised draw-bridge, 
Rnd pointed cannon from battlement and bastion, 
and far from assailing their enemy, lived in 
continual fear, by day and by night, of surprise 
and slaughter. 

Munster also began to breathe after the terri- 
ble agony oi that Geraldine war, and to look 



LIFE OF HUGH o'neILL. J 4? 

T/Ath hope and joy to the dawn that was rismg on 
them from the North. And, though there was m 
the South a strong English army under the " Lord 
President," Sir Thomas Norreys, yet the settlers 
who had been lately " planted" in the fairest 
tracts of Munster began to fear for the security 
of their ill-gotten wealth.* A powerful Catholic 
gentleman of Limerick, named Pierce Lacy, a 
close ally of . O'Neill, sent messengers to the 
North and to Owen Mac Rory O'More, praying 
that a band of the victorious Irish of Ulster or 
Leinster under some active leader might be sent 
southward, where, so soon as the national stan- 
dard should be unfurled, all the oppressed Catho- 
lics and plundered Irish of Munster would rush 
to join it in the name of liberty and holy church. 
O'Neill immediately detached Richard Tyrrell of 
FertuUagh at the head of a chosen band from the 
Northern army to join O'Moore ; and the chief 
of Leix, leaving his brother to command in 
Leinster during his absence, and taking with him 
the renowned victor of Tyrrell's Pass, marched 
rapidly through Ormond, entered Desmond, and 
was forthwith joined by the remnants of the un- 
fortunate Geraldines. The Knight of Glyn, and 
the White Knight, Fitzmaurice Baron of Lixnaw, 
the Knight of Kerry, Dermod and Donogh Mac 
Carthy, the O'Donoghoes, Roche, Viscount Fer- 
moy, and two powerful kinsmen of Ormond him- 
self, Thomas Butler, Baron of Cahir, and Richard 
Lord Mountgarret, who was married to O'Neiirs 
daughter, besides the O'Sullivans, O'Driscols, 

• Camden 



148 LIFE OF HUGH o'nKIji.L. 

O'Donovans, and O'Mahonjs of Carbry, all took 
arms in the common cause. Norreys, after shut- 
ting up a part of his force in garrison at Kilmal- 
lock, retreated with the remainder to Cork, with 
O'More, close upon his rear : while the English 
nndertakers were on all sides ejected from those 
l^nds which their queen had so lately taken it 
upon herself to grant them. Their castles were 
taken and dismantled, their houses burned down 
and razed to the ground : we henr of no wanton 
cruelty done upon the settler but liey were all 
driven away and forced to find refuge in the 
cities and garrisons, and resume those swords 
which had carved them out estates before.* 
Amongst those burnt-out adventurers, one can- 
not much grieve to find the gentle poet of Kil- 
colman, now sheriff of Cork. He had but lately 
finished that " View of the state of Ireland," of 
which we have already seen somewhat, and from 
his retreat on " Mulla's" banks had also issued 
the Faerie Queene, which he had dutifully pre- 
sented, with a mellifluous copy of verses, to the 
Earl of Ormond, then the queen's Lord Lieute- 
nant and natural patron of all undertakers.! He 

* This transaction in Munster seems to have been pre- 
cisely similar to the resumption of plundered estates in 
Ulster in 1641. 

f *' Receive, most noble lord, a simple taste 
Of the wilde fruit which saluage soyl hath bred," &c. 

When one reads of Spenser's expulsion from Kilcol- 
maii, and the burning of his furniture and eftects, it ia 
not easy to forget the mode of treatment he had sug- 
gested for his brother bards of Ireland, who were alwaya 
regarded by the English government, and witli reason, 

iis natural enemies — " 1 wo"ld wish." says he, " that a 



LIFE OF HUGH 0*NEILL. !49 

was driven from both house and bailiwick, left 
Ireland as poor as he had entered it twenty yeara 
before, and died in London the following year 
for lack of bread !* Ah ! poor Spenser ! Those 
" barbarian" Irish, with their genial nature and 
poetical temperament, better knew how to ho- 
nour their inspired poets than these proud Eng- 
lish. Not a " lewd barde" of them all but had 
a better reward than this. 

So passed the winter of 1598, and by the be- 
ginning of the following year no English force 
was able to keep the field throughout all Ireland. 
The Geraldines and their adherents had reco- 
vered their power and possessions in the South ; 
and as they had yet no Earl of Desmond there 
to take the leading of their tribe (a thing un- 
known in Munster for many an age) O'Neill had 
to take order for supplying one. And as the 
kings of England had sometimes presumed to con- 
fer Irish chieftaincies and estates, to be held by 
** English tenure," even when they had no power 
of securing to their grantees the benefit of those 



Provost Marshal should be appointed in every sliire, 
which should continually walke about the countrey with 
halffe a dozen or halfe a score horsemen to take up sucli 
loose persons as they should finde thus wandering, whom 
he should punish by his own authority with such paines 
as the person shall seem to deserve : for if hee be but 
once so taken idly roguing hee may punish him more 
hghtly, as with stocks or such like ; but if hee be found 
againe so loytering he may scourge him with whippes or 
rodds ; after which, if hee be againe taken let him have 
the bitternesse of marshal! law." — View of the State of 
Ireland. 
* Ben Johnson's Letter to Drummond of Hawthomden 



150 



L.IFF. OF HUGH O NEILL, 



girts ; so the. prince of Ulster, seeing he had tKe 
power, knew no reason wliy he should not create 
an earl, to hold his earldom by Irish tenure. 
There had been queen's O'Donnells, queen's Mac 
Gwires, queen's bishops ; — there should now be 
an O'Neill's Count Palatine of Desmond. Earl 
Gerald, the last ot that title, had left a son who 
was delivered in his youth to the English as a 
hostage, and had now, for seventeen years, lain a 
prisoner in the Tower of London. This was the 
true claimant of the earldom according to Eng- 
lish law : but O'Neill, having regard rather to 
the Irish custom of Tanistry than to Saxon de- 
scents and inheritances, sought out among the 
Geraldines a fit man to bear the weight of leader- 
ship in Munster, and James, the son of Thomas 
the Red, and nephew to Gerald, was duly invested 
(by what sort of official document or ceremonial 
we are not informed) with the dignity, estates 
and ancient privileges of Earl of Desmond ; sti- 
pulating to hold the same as a vassal and tribu- 
tary to the prince of Ulster.* And so having 
established Irish power once more in Munster, 
the Northern troops were recalled. 

While O'Neill was thus predominating over 
all Ireland, exercising sovereign powers, and 
cooping up the queen's troops within their forti- 
fications, one is hardly prepared to find him 
making more "submissions :" but if Lord Mount- 
joy's secretary is to be believed (which the r»ro 
sent writer thinks he is not) this vic^^onous chief 

' *' On condition that (forsooth) he should be vassal to 



MFE OF HUGH o'NEILL. 751 

was now craving pardon of his beaten enem7, 
and tendering abject allegiance to the fureigiier; 
*' May you hold laughter," says that singular his- 
torian, " or will you think that Carthage ever 
bred such a faedifragous, truce-breaking wretch, 
when you shall reade, that even in the middest 
of these garboyles, whilst in his letters to the 
King of Spaine he magnified his victories, be- 
seeching him not to believe that he would seeke 
or take away any conditions of peace, yet, most 
impudently, he ceased not to entertain the Lord 
Lieutenant with letters and messages, with oifers 
of submission." Yet Moryson was not the in- 
ventor of this falsehood : such rumours were 
really spread at the time, to impose upon Catholic 
p'>wers on the Continent, to conceal from them 
tlie true nature and magnitude of the Irish war 
and prevent them from sending troops here : 
*' And to the same purpose,"* suggests Sir Fran- 
cis Bacon, *' nothing can be more fit than a 
treaty, or a shadow of treaty, of a peace with 
Spain ; which methinks should be in our power 
to fasten, at least runiore tenus, to the deluding 
of as wise a people as the Irish." 

O'Donnell, in the meantime, had cleared the 
plains of Connaught of all Englishmen, and ad- 
herents of England, and had driven Sir Conyers 
Clifford once more into garrison. He kept his 

* That is "the cutting off the opinion and expectation 
of foreign succours." — See Bacon's Considerations touch- 
ing the Queens Service in Ireland. This is the sarae 
Bacon who was afterwards discoverer of a " Novum Or- 
gauon Scientiarum," saxd also Lord Cliaucellor of Eng- 
land. 



152 LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 

Christmas piously in Ballymote : then led his 
troops into Clanrickarde, plundering the country 
and compelling the western clans to acknowledge 
the jurisdiction of his newly created Mac Wil- 
liam. Athenree was taken by his fierce assault ; 
its English garrison put to the sword, and all the 
plunder of the enemy, clothing, arms, and many 
herds of cattle, sent home to Tyr-connell. The 
whole of Connaught had now been over-run by 
the Kinel-Conal, except only Thomond : and 
Red Hugh's army had a month's repose ; when 
the fiery chief began '* to think it long that they 
were at rest"* and prepared to invade the tem- 
tory of the Dal-Cais, where Donogh O'Brien, 
Earl of Thomond, and the Baron of Inchiquin, 
still retained their base titles and preserved a 
shameful "loyalty" to the Queen of England. 
Thomond was doomed to plunder and slaughter ; 
but " because it would be encountering," says 
O'Donnell's chronicler, " certain opposition and 
battle to assail the noble race who dwelt therein, 
the tribe of Cas, son of Conal, of the swift steedb, 
descended from Brian Boroihme, son of Ken- 
nedy," the chieftain took care to gather a power- 
ful force of all his tributaries and allies. He 
summoned the clans to Ballymote, and was 
speedily attended by his three brothers, Rory, 
Manus, and Cathbar, by Hugh Oge O'Donnell, 
O'Boyle, O'Dogherty, and the Mac Swynes, 
with all the troops of Tyr-connell : Mac Gwire 
with the clans of Fermanagh, also attended this 
fendezvouz ; and of the tribes of Connaught 

• MS. Life of O'-Donneh. 



LIFE OP HUGH o'nELLI.. 1^3 

O'lluarc and Mac William, with O'Dowd, Mac 
Donough, O'Hara, O'Kelly, and Mac Dermott. 
We find also in that army, holding high com- 
mand under his chieftain, a certain Niall Garbh 
O'Donnell — a name accursed — of whom we are 
to hear more in the course of this story. — 
O'Donnell's Irish chronicler is very minute in 
his detail of this expedition : how Red Hugh 
marched southwards silently and rapidly, through 
Clanrickarde, and halted in the evening at the 
Red beach between Kilcolgan and Ardrahan ; 
how they bivouacked in the woods, lighted fires, 
and took food and wines of Spain : how, at mid- 
night, they all arose as one man, continued their 
silent march, and by the dawn of day arrived at 
Clancy's wood : then how O'Donnell " as the 
light of day prevailed over the stars, advanced to 
Corcomroe, and thence to Kilfenora, sending out 
strong parties to scour the country and ravage 
the lands of all those who were friendly to the 
stranger, or owned the sway of Saxon earls and 
barons ; how Mac Gwire attacked and took the 
castle of Conor O'Brien, Baron of Inchiquin, 
and made the baron prisoner, while other bands 
ranged through Thomond, burning, slaying, and 
ravaging ; how they drove all the cattle to Kil- 
fenora; and how the whole northern army, 
having feasted and regaled themselves, turned 
their faces homewards, each party driving its owa 
allotted prey, and the hills of Burren could hardly 
be seen by reason of the multitudes of sheep and 
cattle that trooped over them, wending their way 
to the pastures of Connaught and Tyr-connell, 



Ibi LIFE OF HUGH O NEILL. 

Now there was a certain poet in Thomond, by 
the name of Maoilin Oge, and whilst lie was ab- 
sent from home, some of the northern forayers 
had driven away his cattle, not knowing that it 
was to ono of the honoured race of bards those 
sheep and kine belonged: and Maoilin Oge, 
when he came to know his loss, having heard of 
the generosity of this noble Red Hugh, and how 
reverently he cherished and protected the bards 
and Ollarahs of the North, took his harp and 
hastened after the host of O'Donneli : and being 
introduced into the chieftain's presence, he 
shewed him, out of ancient writings, " that it was 
no shame to the Dal-Cais to be plundered by one 
bearing the name of Hugh O'Donneli ;" — and ho 
touched his harp and sang how the holy Colum- 
kille had foretold this very event — " that a cer- 
tain Hugh, "of the Kinel-Conal should come to 
revenge on the Dal-Cais the destruction of that 
royal seat of Aileach and the carrying away of 
the stones thereof by Murkertach O'Brien."* — 
* My wood, my grove I" (so ran the prophecy 
jf the blessed saint,) " Ah ! my dwelling and my 
school: alas! oh God, a multitude of men. He 
who will revenge my Aileach : the Hugh of 



• This was six hundred years before. The sovereignty 
of Ireland had been disputed between Mac Lochlin, cliief 
of the Hy-Niall and the O'Briens of Thomond. The 
Ulster chieftain had invaded Munster, wasted Limerick, 
and burned the great palace of Kiucora. A few yeai"S 
after, in revenge, O'Brien led a great army to the North, 
levelled the famous royal residence of Aileach, four miles 
from Derry, and caused his clansmen to carr.^* oif each 
man one stone of it to Thomond. 



MFE OF HUGH O NEILL. ^^ '^ 

fi((CEo{ rough roads, the polished body, fam9 
without reproach, long hair in ringlets." And 
asssuredly " he was that Hugh ;" and this plun- 
der of the tribe of Cas was indeed heaven's ven- 
geance granted to the prayer of the patron saint 
of Tyr-connell. Then O'Donnell was well pleased 
both with the poet's song and with Columba'a 
prophecy : and he restored to Maoilin Oge all his 
herds and cattle, and the bard went on his way 
rejoicing, and left his benediction with the 
princely chief. 

One must admit that all the expeditions of this 
wild leader, though daring and dashing, resem- 
bled more the cruel and predatory raids of a 
horde of savages, or of the border clans of Scot- 
land a century before, than any more regular mi- 
litary movements : but an intense hatred of the 
Saxons and of all Saxon usages was Red Hugh*? 
master passion : his whole life was vowed to ven- 
geance : those cruel fetters of Perrot had worn 
his young flesh — had burned into his proud heart 
his crippled feet yet bore the shooting pangs of 
frost that had benumbed him while he lay perish- 
ing, in his flight, upon the snowy mountains: 
and his daily thoughts, his dreams by night, were 
of rooting out and utterly extermmating those 
treacherous foes of his race, and all who held 
with them. The smoke of their blazing towers 
was pleasant as incense to his soul, and he deemed 
a hecatomb of their slain the offering most grate- 
ful to heaven. 

Hugh O'Neill who w^as now the recognized 
I<»adpr, the head and the heart of our national 
confederacy, and directed its operations every" 



liQ LIFE OF HUGH O NEILL. 

uriiere throughout the land, at length saw fo« 
reign power totally prostrated in Ireland, its mi- 
litary resources annihilated or defeated, its Irish 
adherents either crushed, or, what was better, 
brought over to the cause of patriotism and ho- 
nour : but still he omitted no means of strength- 
ening the league : he renewed his intercourse 
with Spain, planted permanent bodies of troops 
on the Foyle, Erne, and Blackwater, engaged the 
services of some additional Scots from the West- 
ern Isles, improved the discipline of his own 
troops, and on every side made preparation to 
renew the conflict with his powerful enemy. For 
he well knew that Elizabeth was not the monarch 
to quit her deadly gripe of this fair island with- 
out a more terrible struggle than hsd yet tieeii 
endured. 



&ITE Of HUGH o'neILL. 157 



CHAPTER XII. 

ESSEX o'nEILL at HOLY-CROSS. 

A. D. 1599—1600. 

Bagnal's death, and the signal disaster of the 
Yellow Ford, frightened and enraged Queen 
Elizabeth's government and people. The mili- 
tary prowess of this formidable Northern chief 
was even exaggerated in their estimate ; and 
Moryson himself tells us that " the generall 
vojce was of Tyrone amongst the English after 
the defeat of Blackwater, as of Hannibal among 
the Romans after the defeat of Cannae." The 
queen was highly enraged against her Lord Lieu- 
tenant for remaining idly in Leinster, engaged in 
petty contention with the O'Mores and O'Byrnes, 
whilst he had intrusted to Marshal Bagnal the 
leading of those fine troops which she had sent 
him, to end, as she hoped, these Irish tvars at a 
blow. Yet it was by no means clear that Or- 
mond's commanding the army in person would 
have ensured a victory. An enemy was now to 
be dealt with such as England had never en- 
countered upon Irish soil before ; and it was 
plain that the amount of forces hitherto employed 
in Ireland would no longer sutHce. De Burgh 



158 LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

and Kildare, Norreys and Bagnal had been suc- 
cessively hurled back from the frontiers of Ulster 
with ignominious rout and overthrow ; each 
campaign only strengthening O'Neill, wasting the 
Ijower and ruining the reputation of English go- 
vernment, until at length a time had come when 
either the Queen of England must at once yield 
up her footing upon Irish ground, or put forth 
all the powers of an empire to retain it. 

Two thousand men under Sir Samuel Bagnal 
were hastily sent over to strengthen Orraond*s 
garrisons in the mean time. And Robert Deve- 
reux. Earl of Essex, then the most powerful sub- 
ject in England, the queen's prime favourite, and 
son to that Essex who had made the unfortunate 
attempt to plunder, convert, and colonize the 
North, was selected as Lord Lieutenant and com- 
mander-in-chief of the splendid army now des- 
tined for Irish service. Some dark intrigues there 
were connected with his appointment — malignant 
contrivances of his enemies at court — self-seeking 
machinations of his friends at court — a whole 
net-work of court intrigue ; which may be found 
in English historians, but in which we do not 
here concern ourselves. Essex had commanded 
with some distinction against the Spaniards, and 
ardently coveted this Irish service as a sphere in 
which he might arrive at still higher fame ; — 
might crush the dreaded O'Neill ; and, as his 
friend and councillor Sir Francis Bacon expressed 
it, " refound and replant the policie of that na- 
tion." " Which design," continues Bacon, " as n 
doth descend to you from your noble father who 
lost his life in tlmt action though he paid tribute 



MFE OF HUGH OTTiltL. 159 

to nature and not to fortune, so I hope your lord- 
ship shall be as fatal a captain to this war as 
Africanus was to the war of Carthage, after that 
both his uncle and his father had lost their lives 
in Spain in the same war."* 



• Letter from Sir Francis Bacon to Essex Scrinia 

Sacra. This celebrated person, who was afterwards 
Lord Chancellor of England, and (being one of the 
basest of mankind) sold liis judgments to the highest 
bidders, was about this time much occupied in devising 
methods of reducing and goA^erning Ireland for belioof of 
his friend and patron Essex. His thoughts on the sub- 
ject are conveyed in the "Considerations touching the 
Queen's Service in Ireland," cited before, and in two or 
three letters to Essex himself. A passage from the 
" Considerations" will indicate the general nature of his 
plans: — "One of the principal pretences whereby the 
heads of the rebellion have prevailed both with the peo- 
ple and the foreigner hath been the defence of the Ca- 
tholique religion : and' it is that Ukewise hath made the 
foreigner reciprocally more plausible with the rebel. 
Therefore a toleration of religion /or a time not definite, 
except it be in some principal tOAvns and precincts after 
the manner of some French edicts, seemeth to me to be 
a matter warrantable by religion, and in pohcie, of abso- 
lute necessity. Neither if any English Papist or recu- 
sant shall for liberty of his conscience transfer his per- 
son, family, and fortunes thither, do I hold it a matter of 
danger, but expedient to draw on undertaking and to 
further population." Upon which fraudulent and cruel 
suggestion the English government really acted ; for in 
the last years of Elizabeth, and first of James, no inter- 
ference was made with Catholic worship in Ireland ; 
some monasteries were repaired, priests appeared with- 
out disguise, and the mass was celebrated openly. But 
tiie toleration was "for a time not definite;" and, hi 
1605, lOng James issued that famous proclamation com. 
mencing — "Whereas his majesty is informed that his 
subjects of Ireland have been deceived by a false reporti 



160 Lit-E OF HUGH o'keijll. 

Under such auspices, with such high hopes, 
and with twenty thousand men at his back, the 
Earl of Essex set forth for Ireland, and laaded 
in Dublin on the 15th of April, 1599.* His in- 
structions were to neglect, in a great degree, all 
chiefs of lesser note, and to strike at the head of 
the Irish confederacy by stationing strong garri- 
sons at Lough Foyle and Ballyshannon,| and 
then, having barred O'Neill's country from its 
communications with Connaught and Scotland, 
to grapple with the chieftain in his fastnesses of 
Tyr-owen. The plans were unexceptionable 
the means furnished to carry them out were enor- 



that his majesty was disposed to allow them liberty of 
conscience, and the free choice of a religion : he hereby 
declares to his beloved subjects of Ireland, that he will 
not admit of any such liberty of conscience as they were 
made to expect by sucli report."* And upon that decla- 
ration he most strictly acted. The same Bacon, in one 
of liis private letters to Essex (Scinia Sacra) suggests 
for Ireland what he calls the " princely pollcie," "<o 
weaken by division and disunion." Oh, sage Sir Francis ! 
Thou hast indeed found the true Organon of Irish go- 
vernment : — these golden rules of tliine, — to deceive by 
treacherous conciliation, — to Aveaken by division, — are 
to be the soul and marrow of English policy in Ireland 
for ever : — and for this thou shalt sit, robed in purest 
ermine, on the highest judicial seat of thy country, and 
5halt keep the conscience of a king ! 

* Besides the large army which had been prepared for 
him he demanded, when about to leave England, that 
two more regiments of old soldiers should be placed at 
his disposal ; wltich was immediately complied with. — 
"He had an army assigned him," says Moryson, "as 
great as himself required, and such for number and 
strength as Ireland had never yet seene." 

+ Camden. 



LIFE OP HUGH o'nEILL. 161 

mous : but it soon became apparent that tho Man 
was a-wanting. 

O'Neill and his confederates were not dismayed 
vX the arrival of this great army and its magnifi- 
cent leader. They did not now, what had been too 
frequent in Ireland, and what appears to have been 
looked for in the present case, vie with each other 
in proffering submissions and suing for pardons. 
O'Neill had, in Ulster, six thousand veteran and 
victorious troops ; no landing of foreigners was 
likely to be made in Lough Foyle without stern 
resistance ; and the chief himself, with his main 
body occupied the passes north of Dundalk, 
calmly watching for the first movement of his 
enemy. O'Donnell with four thousand men, was 
holding Connaught, and guarding the defiles 
near Lough Erne ; O'More had greatly increased 
his forces in Leinster ; and, in the South, the 
Geraldines, headed by O'Neill's Earl of Desmond, 
were once more in arms and eager to wipe away 
the shame of their former defeats. Ir^and had 
never been so strong, so proud, or so united. 
Foreign nations also, when they saw her so well 
able, to help herself, began to offer their assis- 
tance ; and, early in June, a ship arrived from 
Spain in the bay of Donegal, carrying arms for 
two thousand men, all which O'Donnell divided 
into two equal parts, one for himself, and the 
other, says his chronicler, " he sent to Hugh 
O'Neill, as was becoming." 

Lord P^ssex soon showed what mettle was in 
him. Instead of marching in force upon the 
North, he began to waste his strength by petty 
expeditions into Munster, and against O'More. 

L 



lt)2 LIFE OP HUGH o'nkILL. 

He gave the command of all his cavalry to his 
friend Lord Southampton ; conferred the honour 
of knighthood and an office of high trust upc»n 
one John Harington, a trifling courtier and de- 
voted slave of his own ; then led his vast army 
to besiege Cahir castle, a fortress of the Butlers 
situated on the Suir ;* but, before he reached it, 
whilst he marched through Leix, five hundred of 
the O'Mores waited for him in a defile, fell upon 
his rear-guard, slew many of his men, and shore 
60 many waving plumes from the high-crested 
cavalry of England that the place was afterwards 
named by the Irish, Bearna-na-cleite, the Pass of 
Plumes.^ Essex, however, held on his way 
to Cahir ; invested the castle, battered it with 
cannon, and after ten days' stout resistance, and 
some hard fighting with Desmond and Redmond 
Burke who came to relieve the place, succeeded 
in taking it. Then, having received submissions 
from Lords Cahir and Roche, he advanced into 
Limerick, but near Crome was encountered by 
the Geraldines and Mac Carthys. Sir Thomas 
Norreys, Lord President of Munster, was slain 
in the battle,! and the English army was totally 
defeated and forced to retire with heavy loss and 

* Moryson. f O'Sullivan. 

X O'Sullivan. The English chroniclers make no men- 
tion of this battle : they always suppress as far as possi- 
ble whatever is unfavourable to her majesty's arms : but 
the author of the Pacata Hibernia, as if iucideutally, 
speaks of the " unfortunate death of Sir Thomas N orris, 
lately slaine by the rebels ;" and also tells us that, at 
this time, the same " rebels" were "swollen with pride by- 
reason of their manifest victories, which almost in all 
encounters they had lately obtained." 



LIFE OF HUGH o'lNEILL. 163 

disgrace; towards the Pale, closely pui^sued for six 
days by the victorious Irish. When Lord Essex 
arrived in Dublin, stung by defeat and shame, he 
found that a body of six hundred men whom he 
had stationed on the borders of the O'Byrne's 
country, had been set upon by the Irish moun- 
taineers and utterly routed with terrible carnage. 
Essex chose to impute this disaster to miscon- 
duct : he subjected the officers who had com- 
manded that detachment to a trial by court-mar- 
tial ; and, with the ferocious cruelty that belongs 
to a coward, decimated the surviving soldiers. 

Soon after that, finding that the queen was 
impatient of that petty warfare, and displeased 
that he had not yet measured swords with O'Neill, 
he wrote her majesty a long letter,* describing 
the many difficulties he had to contend with, the 
powerful and disciplined troops of the Irish, con- 
sisting, as he says, of men with stronger bodies 
and more perfect in the use of arms than her 
majesty's forces : and he tells the queen that to 
subdue these Irish their priests must be hunted 
down ; that Bacon's policy of division and dis- 
union must be resorted to ; and that all purpose 
of establishing English law, sheriffs and the like, 
throughout the island must be well concealed 
until the military power of the chiefs should be 
/uined. Then he developes a systematic plan for 
reducing the North : to guard the coasts, to plant 
garrisons, to lay waste the country : — most judi- 
cious devices for the purpose, not one of which 



164 LIFE OF HUGH o'nKIM.. 

he ever attempted to carry into effect, being in- 
deed wholly incompetent for such a service. And 
the letter concludes, as was usual in all commu- 
nications from Elizabeth's courtiers, with ex- 
pressions of passionate admiration for her majes- 
ty's person, and constancy eternal. 

All this did not satisfy the imperious queen ; 
and at last Essex, for very shame, was obliged to 
announce his purpose of marching northwards 
against O'Neill; then suddenly another urgent 
occasion arose, that he should first go to Leix 
and O'Fally against the O'Mores and O'Connors, 
whom, says the historian, " he brake with ease :" 
and after that, finding his army much weakened, 
he asked for a reinforcement of one thousand 
men before he could venture upon O'Neill. These 
were speedily sent to him : and now at length he 
seemed resolved upon the northern war, and ac- 
tually sent orders to Sir Conyers Clifford to at- 
tack Belleek on the Saimer, so as to cause a di- 
version on that side, while he should himself pe- 
netrate Ulster by Dundalk and Newry. But 
once again he changed his mind, and, the summer 
being nearly wasted, wrote again to England that 
he could do no more this year, except draw his 
forces towards the borders of Ulster.* The truth 
seems to be, that this courtier-general had no 
stomach for the North ; he trembled to encounter 
the conqueror of far abler leaders than himself, 
and his craven heart melted within him at the 
very name of Blacktvater, 

Sir Conyers Clifford, however, who was a ve- 

• Morvson. 



I.IFE OF HCGH 0*NEILL. 165 

teran soldier, and not a courtier, having received 
Lis orders from the commander-in-chief, set forth 
to execute them at the head of two thousand men, 
consisting of fourteen hundred infantry and Lord 
Southampton's horse, with some auxiliary cavalry 
supplied by Clanrickarde, and commanded by 
Lord Dunkellin. Long before Clifford was ready 
to march, O'Donnell and O'Ruarc had intelli- 
gence of the intended movement, and were already 
waiting for him in the mountains of Sligo and 
Breffni, ** chasing wild deer" to pass the time 
until nobler game should come.* Clifford left 
Boyle and marched northward by the passes of 
the Corsliabh mountains, till he arrived at a 
wooded gorge, which the general thought it pru- 
dent to explore first with the infantry, leaving 
his baggage, cavalry and artillery on the plain. 
He led the troops himself into the defile, and 
when he had advanced so far as to make retreat 
perilous, the bagpipes of the Irish were heard 
both in front and on every side : the cry of 
O'Donnell-aboo ! rung through the hills ; and, 
almost before the English saw an enemy, with 
the rush of a winter torrent the Clan-Conal was 
upon them. Clifford's soldiers fought bravely, 
and sustained the charge like men who knew that 
to turn their backs was death : but nothing 
could stand against the fierce onset of O'Don 
nell's clansmen : Clifford himself and Sir Henry 
Batcliffe were slain, and their whole force was 
800U totally routed and driven back with slaugh- 
ter into the plain. The cavalry, under Jephson, 

' MS. Life of O'DonnelL 



166 LIFE OF HUGH O'NKILL. 

Jiaving now ground where thej could act, dashed 
amongst the Irish and charged tliem up to tlie 
very skirts of the wood : but after a severe 
struggle the cavalry also yielded, and the whole 
army rotreated, or rather fled, to Boyle abbey, 
pursued for three miles by the victorious Irish.* 
Next day a council of war was held in Boyle by 
the surviving officers, Jephson, Lord Dunkellin 
and Sir Arthur Savage ; and, as they heard that 
O'Donnell's entire force was at hand, they thought 
it best to abandon the whole expedition and with- 
draw their troops into garrison, f 

This battle of the Corsliabh mountainsif was 
followed by the surrender of Sligo to O'Donnell. 
That place had been held for the English by 
Theobald Burke " of the Ships" and O'Connor 
Sligo : but now Burke made sail, with all his 
ships, for Galway ; and O'Connor, having sub- 
mitted to O'Donnell, was reinstated in his chief- 
taincy, on engaging to assist his countrymen 
against the Entrlish. 

Another royal army scattered, like chaff, upon 
the borders of Ulster : another veteran general 
slain : the months of summer trifled away : the 
army wearied by driftless expeditions, disheart- 
ened by defeat, and thinned by the Irish battle- 
axes : these had been hitherto the net result of 
an enterprize of such pith and moment as the 

* Moryson ; Mac Geoghegan. The latter states the 
numbers killed on the side of the English at 1,400, the 
ft^rmer at 120. Moryson also excuses the flight of Jeph- 
son 's horse, for that their powder, he says, was spent. 

t Morj'-son. 

t Geajrally miscalled *' the Curlews." 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nlill. 167 

expedition under Lord Essex. Having failed, 
however, in his military operations, we are next to 
see his lordship trying negotiation. On O'Neill's 
invitation he met the chief at the old place of 
parley, near Dundalk : they were both on horse- 
back at opposite sides of the " ford Ballaclinch ;"* 
and O'Neill, ever the flower of courtesy, spurred 
his horse into the middle of the stream while 
Essex stood upon the opposite bank. First they 
had a private conference, in which Lord Essex, 
won by the chivalrous bearing and kindly address 
of the chief, became, say English historians, too 
confidential with an enemy of his sovereign, f 
spoke without reserve of his pretensions, his 
daring hopes and most private thoughts of ambi- 
tion ; until O'Neill had sufficiently read his secret 
soul, fathomed his poor capacity and understood 
the full meanness of his shallow treason. Then 
Cormac O'Neill and five other Irish leaders 
were summoned on the one side ; on the other 
Lord Southampton and an equal number of Eng- 
lish officers ; and a solemn parley was opened in 
due form. On this occasion the demands of 
O'Neill seemed to have been precisely what he 
had always required before — freedom of religion- 
exemption from English government — restitution 
of plunder, (or in English phraseology, of /or- 
feited estates :) and Essex, it seems, protested on 
bis part that he thought those terms altogether 
just, and promised to use his influence with the 
queen to have them agreed upon as the basis of 

* Moryson. t Camden ; Moryson. 



168 LIFE OF HUGH o'neTLL. 

a peace. For the present the conference ended 
in the parties agreeing to a six weeks' truce, each 
retaining a right to begin hostilities again, upon 
giving notice to the other fourteen days before.* 
This notable truce had scarcely been concluded 
until Essex, taking violently to heart a severe 
rebuke contained in a letter from the queen^ 
and fuming like a peevish child, suddenly, in 
the month of September, threw up his Irish 
command, left all powers of government in the 
hands of Archbishop Loftus and Sir George 
Carew — hurried to London, attended by his crea- 
t ire Harington and some others, and flung him- 
self at the feet of her majesty — a place better 
suited to him than an Ulster hill-side, with dark 
woods around him, and the Bloody Hand of 
O'Neill beckoning him onward. How he was 
received at Greenwich; how the virago queen 
ordered him into instant arrest ; how she stormed 
and swore at his presumption in daring to quit 
his post in Ireland without leave asked, what 
treasons were alleged against him, and how it 
fared with him thereafter ; — all this belongs to 
English history, not to Irish. Yet one reads 
with pleasure how the queen spurned from her 
presence the foolish knight Harington as he 
kneeled at her feet and sought to excuse his un- 
fortunate master : — " She caiched at my girdle 
when I kneeled to her," says Harington, " aud 

* For this conference, see Camden, Morjson. It was 
one of the treasons afterwards charged against Essex 
that he had entertained these proposals, ami engaged to 
support them. 



OFE OF HUOFI 0*NEILL. \C)9 

swore, *By God's Son I am no Queen : that man 
is above me/ " Then she demanded of Harington 
a journal which he had been ordered to keep of 
t!ie transactions in Ireland ; and on reading the 
record of disgrace, said fiercely, " By God's Son 
ye are all idle knaves and the Lord Deputy 
worse"* — in which sentiment of her majesty there 
are few that will not probably concur. 

But to return to Ireland : Hugh O'Neill had 
not been idle. He had renewed his inter- 
course with Spain ; and King Philip the Second 
having died in this very month of September, his 
successor, who appears to have been impressed 
with a higher idea of the importance of the reli- 
gious war in Ireland, instantly despatched two 
envoys to O'Neill — Don Martin de la Cerda, and 
Muttheo of Oviedo, the latter of whom was an 
ecclesiastic and appointed by the pope to the 
archbishopric of Dublin. They brought to Ire- 
land papal indulgences for those who should fight 
against English heresy ; and presented O'Neill 
with a " phoenix plume," bkssed by his holiness, 
and, what was more useful, with 22,000 pieces of 
gold.f 

The six-weeks' truce made with Essex had 
expired : and O'Neill sent warning to the queen's 
council that in fourteen days he would take the 
field again. In the mean time he marched through 
the centre of the island, at the head of his troops, 
to the South ; — a kind of royal progress, which 

• Harington's NugcB Antiquce, cited by lingard 
I O'SuUiv^an ; Moryson. 



170 I^ITTZ or HUGH O NEITX. 

he thought fit to call a pilgrimage to Holy Cross : 
for he was aware that religion was the bond of 
union amongst his adherents in Munster, and ac- 
cordingly appeared there, not in his character of 
a Celtic chieftain, but rather as the pope's cham- 
pion and leader of the Catholic cause. He held 
princely state at Holv Cross, concerted measures 
witli the Southern lords, and distributed a mani- 
festo, announcing himself as the accredited De- 
fender of the Faith. Those chiefs whom he 
found zealous in the cause he strengthened and 
encouraged : " from such as he held doubtful," 
says Stafford,* " he took pledges, or detained 
them prisoners ;" put in irons the White Knight 
and his son-in-law, Donogh Mac Corraac Carty, 
whom he found trafficking with the enemy ; dis- 
placed Donal Mac Carthy from the cliieftaincy 
of Clan-Carrha, and advanced to that dignity Flo- 
rence Mac Carthy, who was more devoted to the 
good cause. Those who still held back from the 
national confederacy, and could not be moved by 
persuasion, he treated as enemies, wasting their 
lands and pursuing them with fire and sword. — 
that so they might be brought to a better mind. 
One of the most powerful of these refractory 
lords was the Viscount Barry. O'Neill therefore 
let loose a body of troops upon his country, took 
some prisoners, and drove away a spoil of three 
thousand cows and four thousand horses ; — and 

* Or rather Carew:— author of the Pacata Hiberuia. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILTv. 171 

then, having given him so intelligible a warninij, 
reasoned with him earnestly by letter :* — 

•' My Lord Barry, — Your impietie to God, cracltie 
to your soule and bodie, tyrannie and ingratitude both 
to your followers and country are inexcusable and into- 
lerable. You separated yourself e from the unitie of 
Qirist's mysticall bodie, the Catholicke Church. You 
know the sword of extirpation hangeth over your head 
as well as ours, if things fall out other wayes than well : 
you are the cause why all the nobilitie of the South (from 
the east part unto the west) you being linked unto each 
one of them, either in affinitie or consanguinitie, are not 
linked together to shake oflf the cruell yoake of heresie 
and tyrannie, with which our soules and bodies are op- 
prest. All those aforesaid, depending of your resolu- 
tion, and relying to your judgment in this common cause 
of our religion and countrey ; you might forsooth with 
their helpe, (and the reste that are combyned in this 
holy action,) not only defende yourselfe from the incur- 
sion and invasion of the EngUsh, but also (by God's 
assistance, who miraculously and above all expectation 
gave good successe to the cause principally undertaken 
for his glorie, exaltation of religion, next for the restau- 
ration of the mines and preservation of the countrey,) 
expel them and deliver [them and] us from the most 
miserable and cruell exaction and subjection, enjoy your 
religion, safetie of wife and children, life, lands, and 
goods, which all are in hazard through your folly — En- 
ter, I beseech you, into the closet of your conscience, 
and hke a wise man weigh seriously the end of your 
actions, and take advise of those that can instruct you 
and informe you better than your owne private judg- 
ment can leade you unto. Consider and reade with at- 
tention and settled mind tins discourse I send you ; that 
it may please God to set open your eyes and graunt you 
a better minde. From the campe this instant, Tuesday, 
the sixt of March, according to the new computation. 
I pr^-7 you to send me the papers I sent you as soon as 
your honour shall reade the same. 

" O'Neill," 

• Pacata Hibernia. 



172 LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL.. 

Lord Barry's answer was spirited : he reminded 
O'Neill, that he, an Anglo-Irish baron, was alto- 
gether differently circumstanced with respect to 
the Queen of England, from the ancient Celtic 
race ; — which indeed was true : — " for you shall 
understand," he says, " that I hold my lordships 
and lands, immediately under God, of her ma- 
jestic and her most noble progenitors, by corpo- 
rall service, and of none other, by very ancient 
lenour ; which service and tenour none may dis- 
pense withal but the true possessor of the crowne 
of England, b ing now our sovereign lady Queen 
Elizabeth." He then demands '* restitution of 
his spoyle and prisoners ; — and after," he conti- 
nues, " unless you be better advised for your loy- 
alty, use your discretions against mee and mine, 
and spare not if you please, for I doubt not, with 
the helpe of God and my prince to bee quit with 
some of you hereafter, though now not able to 
use resistance. And so wishing you to become 
true and faithful subjects to God and your prince, 
I end, at Barry Court, this twenty-sixe of Fe- 
bruary, 1599"— 1600. 

It does not appear that O'Neill used any fur- 
ther severity towards Barry or his people in con- 
sequence of this obstinacy. 

All this time the English forces in Munster 
lay closely shut up in Cork, and a few other gar- 
risons, not daring to keep the field. Sir Warham 
Saint Leger and Sir Henry Power were now the 
queen's commissioners for the government of these 
southern troops until a new Lord President of 
Munster should be appointed instead of" Sir Tho- 
mas Norreys : but while O'Neill was in the South 
tlieir dominion was bounded bv the walls of Cork. 



LIFE OF HUGH O NEILL. 173 

One day, in this same month of February, 1600, 
** Tyrone with his hell-hounds," as an English 
historian has it, " being not far from Corke," 
these two functionaries were riding out to take 
the air, about a mile from the city, accompanied 
by some officers and gentlemen and a guard of 
horsemen. Suddenly they were confronted by 
Mac Gwire at the head of a patrolling party of 
CNeill's cavalry ; and, on the instant. Sir War- 
ham discharged a pistol at the chieftain of Fer- 
managh and wounded him mortally ; but Mac 
Gwire, before he fell, struck Saint Leger so crush- 
ing a blow witli his truncheon upon the head, 
that he also fell dead from his horse. Save these 
two, not a blow was struck on either side.* The 
English betook themselves to the city, and ven- 
tured abroad more cautiously afterwards. 

*' The intent of O'Neill's journey," as Moryson 
tells us, " was to set as gre ;t combustion as he 
could in Munster, and so, taking pledges of the 
rebels, to leave them under the command of one 
chief head." And now having accomplished his 
mission there, he turned his face homeward ; 
marched through Ormond, — through Westmeath 
between Athlone and MuUingar, and arrived in 
his dominions of Ulster without meeHng an 
enemy ; although there was then in Ireland a 
royal army amounting, after all the havoc made 
in it during the past year, to 14,422 foot, and 
1,231 horse,| well provided witti artillery and all 
military stores. 

• Pacata Hibernia. 

t Moryson. Before O'Neill's wars we hear of no Eng. 
lisli force employed m Ireland amounting to more than 
two or three thousand men. 



174 LIFE OP HUGH o'nEILIi. 



CHAPTER XUL 

EXPEDITION TO DERRY TREACHEROUS POIilCY 

OF MOUNTJOY. 

A. D. 1600. 

Whilst the prince of Ulster was awakening 
and organizing the South, a new English de- 
puty had anived in Dublin, a more formidable 
enemy by far than any whom O'Neill had yet 
encountered. Charles Blount, Baron Mountjoy, 
who was not only an experienced officer, but 
a nobleman of much learning and taste, a " book- 
ish man," as his secretary describes him, — a 
powerful theologian and confuter of Papists, 
arrived in February to take the command in 
Ireland. He had strict instructions to ej?tablish 
at once powerful garrisons in Derry and Bally- 
shannon ;* and to effect this paramount object, 
additional troops were to be poured into Ire- 
land and placed at the governor's disposal ; — a 
tl<;et of transport ships was to be provided. — 
No toil, or peril, or blood ; no fraud, corrup- 
tion, or treasure, was to be spared which miglit 
become necessary for the reduction of this re- 

Camdeu 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 175 

nowned Northern chieftain and his gallant Ul- 
ster septs under the sway of England. Not tnat 
the queen of that country had any claim to the 
North, or any subjects there, or any just quarrel 
with the inhabitants or their chiefs ; but English 
undertakers lusted after the broad lands of Ul- 
ster ; — English divines longed to undertake the 
rich livings, the fertile carucates, ballyboes, and 
plow-lands wherewith Catholic piety had en- 
dowed that Northern church. And besides, an 
Irish annalist tells us, " it was great vexation 
of mind to the queen and her councils in Eng- 
land and Ireland, that the Kinel Conal, Kinel 
Eoghain and all Ulster, besides those chiefs that 
were confederated with them, had made so long 
and successful a defence against them. They 
also remembered, yea, it secretly preyed like a 
consumption upon their hearts, that so many of 
their people had been lost and so much of their 
money and wealth consumed in carrying on the 
Irish war."* So the preparations of England 
were on a larger scale than ever : another des- 
perate effort was determined upon ; and the ablest 
man in the queen's dominions was sent to con- 
duct it. 

Mountjoy had not been a week in Ireland when 
news reached him that O'Neill was on his march 
northward, and intended to pass through West- 
meath. He instantly drew together all his avail- 
able force and set forth from Dublin to intercept 



• Cited in the admirable liistorical sketch of Deny in 
the Ordnance Memoir. 



17^ LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL 

him :* but O'Neill had adranced so rapidly that 
when Mountjoy arrived in Westmeath the Irish 
were already in O'Reilly's country : he did not 
follow them into the North, but returned to the 
l^ale to take counsel with the other English 
oificers, on the operations of that grand campaign 
which was now meditated against every province 
of the Island. 

In the same ship that carried Mountjoy to Ire- 
land came Sir George Carew, to whom the queen 
gave the title of " President of Munster," and 
assigned a body of three thousand foot and two 
hundred and fifty horse, for serving in that pro- 
vince. About the same time a powerful arma- 
ment, destined for Lough Foyle, embarked at 
Chester and sailed to Carrickfergus bay, where 
it was joined by a thousand additional troops 
drafted from various garrisons in Ireland. Sir 
Henry Docwra was chosen to command it ; and 
on the 7th of May he set sail from Carrickfergus, 
with a fleet of sixty-seven sail, carrying four 
thousand infantry and two hundred horse,f besides 
the seamen. They took with them, according to 
Sir Henry's own account, " a quantitie of deal- 
boards and spars of timber, 100 flocke bedds, 
with other necessaries to furnish an hospitall 
withall; one piece of demy cannon of brass, two 
culverins of iron, a master-gunner, two master- 
masons, and two master-carpenters, allowed in 

* Pacata Hib. 

t It is an instance of Mory son's uncandid practice o( 
talsifjing numbers, &c., that he officially states Docwre's 
cavalry at 100 men ; when Sir Henry himself admits he 
had twice that number. 



LIFE OF HUGH O^NEILL. I7j 

pay, with a grea.. /lumber of tooles and other 
utensils, and with all victuall and munition re- 
quisite/'** On the 14th this strong force entered 
Lough Foyie. 

During those same days that Docwra's fleet 
was coasting round the headlands of Antrim, 
Lord Mountjoy with another army was marching 
northwards in order to draw away the attention 
of O'Neill and O'Donnell from the Foyle. On 
Whit- Sunday morning he passed the Moyry, and 
by the l6th of May had occupied the country 
around Newry. On the l7th Lord Southampton 
and Sir Oliver Lambert were to form a junction 
with him ; and Mountjoy sent Captain Edward 
Blaney with five hundred foot and fifty horse to 
secure their passage through the dreaded Moyry 
defile, where O'Neill had often before turned back 
the tide of invasion. O'Neill was in the neigh- 
bourhood watching all these movements at the 
head of fourteen hundred men. Blaney was 
suffered to pass unmolested towards Dundalk ; 
and then the Irish took up a position at the " four- 
mile-water," where there was a ford all environed 
by woods in the very middle of the pass. The 
English soon appeared, with Southampton, Lam- 
bert and Blaney, commanding a force much 
greater than O'Neill's. The Irish however fought 
every foot of ground, and, though finally forced 
back, retired in good order aid with but little 
loss.f 

* *' A narration of the services of the army ymployed 
to Lough Foyle under the leading of me Sir H. Docwra, 
Knight." 

* Moryson. 



178 LIFE OF HUGH o'nE.U.L» 

Mountjoy received his reinforcements ; but a^ 
the troops of O'Neill and O'Donnell were now 
collecting in great force, and occupied every pass 
and position north of Newry ; and as he calcu- 
lated that Docwra had by this time effected his 
landing in the North, the deputy hastily withdrew 
his army towards the Pale, without having pene- 
trated even so far as Armagh. He stationed 
however strong detachments in garrison at Newry, 
Carlingford, and Dundalk. 

On the day of the fight at Moyry Pass, Doc- 
"wra's fleet was lying at Culraore, where the river 
Foyle expands itself into the broad " lake of Fe- 
val, the son of Lodan." The troops disembarked 
and began to build a fort there ;* while the 
O'Doghertys of Inishowen and O'Cahans of 
Arachty, though fully able to repel any invasion, 
such as had ever been attempted before, were 
totally unprepared for so vast an armament as 
this, and looked on in astonishment. Most of the 
available forces were beyond Armagh, with 
O'Neill and O'Donnell ; and no resistance was 
offered to the enemy until they had finished their 
fort, landed their whole army, taken Aileach, a 
castle of O'Dogherty's, and finally made them- 
selves masters of the hill of Derry, which 
Docwra describes as " a place in manner of an 
iland, comprehending within it forty acres of 
ground, wherein were the mines of an old abbay, 
of a bishopp's house, of two churches, and at one 
of the ends of it an old castle, the river called 
Lough Foyle, encompassing it all on one side, 

* Docwra's *' Narration." 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILI* 179 

and a bogg most commonlie wett, and not easilie 
passable, except in two or three places, dividing 
it from the maine land." These ruins were the 
remains of Randolph's fortification, and of the 
churches he had turned into castles, and which 
had never been repaired since his men were 
driven from that post in Shane O'Neill's time. 

Docwra began with energy to fortify the hill, 
and lay out a town there. He sent ships along 
the shores of Lough Foyle, to pull down all 
houses near the beach, and bring away the tim- 
ber for building; and as there was a fine wood, 
containing abundance of old birch trees, lying on 
the other side of the river, in O'Cahan's country, 
he sent daily parties of woodcutters, with a guard 
of soldiers, to hew it down, and " there was not,** 
he says, " a stick of it brought hom*^ but was first 
well fought for.*'* 

When Mountjoy had withdrawn to Dublin, 
O'Neill and O'Donnell, hearing of this new 
enemy on the Foyle, once more turned their 
faces northward, and suddenly appeared with five 
thousand men before Derry, hoping to take it by 
surprise. They attacked a party of horsemen 
whom they found early in the morning, patrolling 
outside the entrenchments, drove them in to the 
foot sentinels, and " made a countenance," says 
Docwra, " as if they came to make but that one 
day's work of it ; but, the alarum taken, and our 
men in arms, they contented themselves to at- 
tempte no further ; but seeking to draw us forth 
into the country, where they hoped to take ufi st 

* Docwra's " Narration." 



180 LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

some advjantages ; and finding we stood upon the 
defensive onlie, after the greatest parte of the 
day spent in scrimish, a little without our campe, 
they departed towards the evening, whither did 
wee think it not fitt to pursue them." 

Docwra's instructions were, so soon as he 
should have established himself in Derry, to de- 
tach one thousand foot and fifty horse, and send 
them by sea to Ballyshannon, under Sir Matthew 
Morgan, to effect another landing there ; but he 
very soon found that it would need all the force 
he had to hold his ground in Derry. Morgan*s 
expedition was therefore deferred : and although 
Docwra had, between soldiers and seamen, a 
larger force than the whole Irish army of Ulster, 
yet the garrison of Derry for several months at- 
tempted no military operations in the country : 
they found they must " sitt it out all winter :" 
and besides, Docwra says, " the country was yet 
unknown to us ; and those we had to deal with 
were such as I am sure would chuse or refuse 
to feight with us as they saw their own advan- 
tage." 

But it was not on battle-field that the main 
part of the new Deputy's work was to be done. 
Elizabeth's government had now fully adopted 
that policy which is contained in the two me- 
morable precepts of Bacon : to weaken the Irish 
by disunion — and to cheat them by a temporary 
indulgence of their worship. A relaxation of the 
penal code would at once, it was hoped, detach 
the Anglo-Irish race from O'Neill's standard, and 
even break the strongest bond of union amongst 
the old Irish tribes themselves ; and with that 



LIFE OF HUGH 0*NEILL. 161 

view, Lord Essex had already begun to discou- 
rage prosecutions in the High Commission Court, 
had connived at the illegal celebration of mass, 
and set at liberty several priests then imprisoned 
for religion.* Mountjoy also, from the day of 
his coming over, acted with similar forbearance ; 
and we find, passing between this deputy and 
Queen Elizabeth's council, a correspondence dis- 
playing all the liberality, all the tenderness, for 
Irish Catholics, that a IJritish minister has never 
failed to assume, when a storm of Irish wrath 
was to be weathered, or the hope of Irish nation- 
liood to be crushed. " Whereas," says the De- 
puty, " it hath pleased your lordships in your last 
letters to command us to deal moderately in the 
great matter of religion, I had, before the receipt 
of your lordship's letters, presumed to advise 
such as dealt in it, for a time, to hold a more re- 
strained hand therein." And again : " We should 
be advised how we do punish in their bodies or 
goods any such for religion as do profess to be 
Hiithful subjects to her Majesty, and against 
whom the contrary cannot be proved."f Thus 
the act of Uniformity being for a time suspended, 
all the Irish, even in the cities, where they had 
been compelled by pains and penalties to attend 
upon the Queen's clergy, (for they were all Ca- 
tholics still,) immediately abandoned the re- 
formed churches, and set the churchwardens at 
defiance.}: 

* Mac Geognegan. f Morysoii. 

X "They be all Papists by profession." — Spcmer, 
I'Jie zealous reformers of that day treated the ffovem- 



182 LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILL. 

This policy, however, could hardly operate in 
the North, where the war was national, not reli- 
gious ; and where Reformation and persecution 
were still unknown. For the North, therefore, 
another artifice was used : the ambition of cer- 
tain members of ruling families was excited by 
secret offers of English support, if they would 

ment policy of temporising with what they called "ido- 
latry" much as a similar policy has been received by the 
corresponding class in later times. The illustrious 
James Ussher was leader of that extreme section ; and 
" his spirit," in the words of Dr. Mant, "was strongly 
stirred within him by this new condition of things." 
" He availed himself," continues the bishop, " of a spe- 
cial solemnity, when it was in his course to preach be- 
fore the government at Christ Church, for delivering a 
remarkable sermon, in which he plainly expressed his 
eense of the recent proceeding : choosing for his text the 
6th verse of the 4th chapter of Ezekiel, where the pro- 
phet, by lying on his side, was to ' bear the iniquity of 
the house of Judah forty days : I have appointed thee a 
^v for a year' — a prophecy which he noted to signify 
the time of forty years to the destruction of Jerusalem, 
and that nation for their idolatry ; and then, making di- 
rect application to his own country, in relation to its 
connivance at Popery, in these impressive words : From 
this year will I reckon the sin of Ireland, that those 
whom you now embrace shall be your ruin, and you 
shall bear their iniquity. This application of the pro- 
phecy was made in 1601, and in 1641 broke out that 
rebellion which was consummated in the massacre ot 
many thousands of its Protestant inhabitants by those 
whose idolatrous religion was now connived at." 

Dr. Mant is a Christian bishop, of eminent piety and 
profound learning. He has written an able, an erudite, 
and, as the present writer heartily believes, an honest 
book, upon the history of Irish Protestantism ; yet this 
i« the light in which he, for his part, views the war o 
^641. and the causes that led to it. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILL. 183 

revolt against their chiefs, and aspire to the Icad- 
\ng of their respective septs ; and, accordingly, 
in the course of this summer arose tliree preten- 
ders to northern chieftaincies. Niall O'Donnell, 
surnamed Garbh, "the Rugged," one of the 
ablest leaders of Clan-Conal, and whose name 
was distinguished in the Thomond expedition, 
oasely sold himself to the enemy ; and upon pre- 
tence of some injustice done him by the O'Don- 
nell, entered into communication with Docwra, 
gained over many of the clansmen to his side, re- 
volted against his lawful prince, and received an 
English garrison into the castle of Lifford. In 
Tyr-owen, Art, the son of Tirlough Lynnogh, 
and who probably still held his father's castle of 
Strabane, became, by favour of Queen Eliza- 
beth, Sir Arthur O'Neill, and encouraged by the 
near neighbourhood of an English army, dared 
to claim the chieftaincy of his sept. Both these 
traitors became close allies of Sir Henry Docwra, 
and by their assistance he was soon enabled to 
push his operations somewhat farther up the river. 
Pie built the fort of Dun-na-long, six miles from 
Derry, and stationed eight hundred men there ; 
while the rebellious Irish were wasting and plun- 
dering the country of their kinsmen on both sides 
of the Foyle. On the southern frontier of Ul- 
ster, also, Connor Roe MacGwire, having been 
in like manner tampered with by the Deputy, 
took arras against his country in the character of 
*' Queen's MacGwire." 

It is plain that these revolted Irish did not aid 
the Queen's forces from any servile " loyalty'* vo 
V, foreign princess ; but rather a<xepted the prof- 



184 I.IFK OF IIUGl' O'NEtl.1.. 

fered aid of Docwra and Mountjoy, to furtlieir, 
as they fondly imagined, their own schemes oi 
weak ambition.* They were treated by those 
officers, /or the present, as allies and independent 
Irish chiefs — were addressed by them, for a time, 
as the O'Neill and the O'Donnell,] and after- 
wards fared as we shall see. 

In Manster, Sir George Carew was at this 
time shut up in Cork, as Docwra was in Derry ; 
and wrote to the council in Dublin that he could 
for the present do nothing in the field, with his 
three or four thousand men. " Yet," says his se- 
cretary, " relying upon the justnesse of the warre, 
more than upon the number of his forces, he re- 
solved to try the uttermost of his witt and cun- 
ning, without committing the matter to the ha- 
zard of fortune ;" and " the President discern- 
ning the warre in Mounster to be like a monster 
with many heads, or a servant that must obey 
divers masters, did thinke thus : that if the heads 
themselves might be set at variance they would 
prove the most fit instruments to ruine one ano- 
ther."! 

The two most powerful leaders of the national 
army in Munster were James, Earl of Desmond, 
and Dermot O'Connor, who commanded fourteen 
hundred BonnoghtSy or mercenary troops, con- 

• Paoata Hib. 
I " EademprmcipafMs affectatio incitavit Nellum O'Don- 
uellum, cognomento Asperum, ut adversus O'Donnel- 
lum belligerando, TirconneLlae excidium afferret."- — 
O'Sullivan. He pronounces them, as he well may, 
worse than heretics. 

t Pac. Hit. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL, 185 

sisting of northerns and Connaughtmen, as 
O'Neill's lieutenant in the south. O'Connor was 
married to a Geraldine lady, daughter of the late 
Earl Gerald, and sister to the present heir of 
that title, who was still a prisoner in the Tower, 
while his dignity and estates were usurped by 
O'Neill's Desmond. Here were elements of in- 
ti'igiie, incentives and materials for treachery, 
which English statesmanship was not long in 
turning to account. Carew, " in a very secret 
manner, provided and sent a fit agent to sound 
tlie inclination of the Lady Margaret, and, find- 
ing her fit to be wrought upon, the conditions 
should be propounded — namely, that if her hus- 
band would take Desmond prisoner, and deliver 
him into the hands of the President, he should 
incontinently receive one thousand pounds ster- 
ling ; and that he should have a company of men 
in pay from the Queene, and other conditions of 
satisfaction to herself and her brother."* This 

* Pac. Hib. Another part of the preparation for this 
villanous transaction was a letter written by the Presi- 
dent to Desmond, in which he pretends to treat with the 
earl for the betrayal of Dermot O'Connor : this letter 
was placed in O'Connor's hands ; and he was to pretend 
tliat he had intercepted it, and so was obliged, in self 
dofence, to seize upon his secret enemy. The letter was 
as follows : *' Sir, your last letters I have received, and 
am exceeding glad to see your constant resolution of re- 
turne to subjection, and to leave the rebelUous courses 
Avherein you have long persevered. You may rest as- 
sured that promises shall bee kept ; and you shall no 
sooner bring Dermond O'Connor to me, alive or dead^ 
and banish liis Bownoghs out of the countrie, but you 
shall have your demand satisfied, which I thanke God I 
am both able and willuig to performe. Beleeve me, ycm 



186 

president's secretary and historian details with 
much candour, rather indeed as matter of tri- 
umub, many other dark machinations of his crafty 
mastcx ; how he suborned one Nugent to assas- 
sinate his officer, John Fitzgerald, brother to the 
earl ; how he practised with Florence MacCar- 
thy, and by his means got hold of O'SuUivar 
More ; how showers of English gold, a net-work 
of English intrigue and perfidy, covered the land, 
until the leaders of the confederacy in Munster 
knew not whom to trust, or where they were safe 
from treason and assassination, Nugent's story 

liave no better way to recover your desperate estate than 
by this good service, which you have proffered; and 
therefore I cannot but commend your judgment in choos- 
ing the same to redeeme your former faults : and I do 
the rather beleeve the performance of it by your late ac- 
tion touching Loghguire, wberein your brother and 
yourself have well merited ; and, as I promised, you 
shall find mee so just as no creature living sliall ever 
know that either of you did assent to the surrender of it. 
All your letters I have received, as also the joint letter 
from your brother and yourselfe. I pray lose no time, 
for delays m great actions are subject to many dangers. 
Now tliat tlie Queen's armie is in the field, you may 
worke your determination with most securitie, being 
ready to releeve you upon a day's warning. So praying 
God to assist you in this meritorious enterprize, I doe 
leave you to his protection this twentie ninthe of May, 
1600. 

There might be some dijfficulty in believing that the 
English commanders in Munster resorted to these base 
tricks, unknown to all honourable warfare ; but that the 
authority for it is Carew himself, writing under the 
name of his secretary Stafford. He describes tlie whole 
plot minutely, and publishes the letter " to manifest the 
invention." 



LIFE OF HUGH 0*NEI1.L. 187 

may serve as an example of this policy of Carew, 
and is told with much coolness by his secretary : 
" Nugent came to make his submission to the 
President, and to desire pardon for his faults 
committed ; answer was made, that for so much 
16 his crimes and offences had been extraordi- 
nary, he could not hope to be reconciled unto the 
state, except he would deserve it by extraordi- 
nary service, which, saith the President, if you 
shall perform you may deserve not only pardon 
for your faults committed heretofore, but also 
some store of crownes to releeve your wantes 
liereafter. Hee presently promised not to be 
wanting in any thing that lay in the power of one 
man to accomplish, and in private made offer to 
the president, that if hee might bee well recom- 
pensed, hee w^ould ruine within a short space 
either the Sugan earle, or John Fitzthomas, his 
brother. And indeed very likely he was both to 
attempte and perform as much as he spake — to 
attempte, because he was so valiant and daring, 
as that he did not feare anything ; and to execute, 
because by reason of his many outrages before 
committed, the cheefe rebels did repose great 
confidence in him. The President having con- 
trived a plot for James Fitzthomas, (as is before 
sliewed,*) gave him in charge to undertake John, 
his brother." Shortly after the secretary conti- 
nues : " Whilst these things were in handling, 
N^ugent (whose promises to the President before 

• He alludes to the plot formed with Dcrmot O'Con. 
nor's wife. 



188 l-IFE OF HUGH o'NEILL.. 

we recited) intending no longer to deferre tbc 
enterprize, attempted the execution in this sort. 
The President being past Loughgwire, John 
Fitzthomas riding forth of the iland towards the 
fastness of Arloghe, where most of liis men re- 
mained, with one other called John Coppinger,- 
whom he (Nugent) had acquainted with the en- 
terprise, and, as he thought, made sure to him, 
he attended this great captaine, and being now 
passed a certain distance from all com panic, per- 
mitted John Fitzthomas to ride a little 'before 
him, minding, (his backe being turned,) to shoote 
him through with his pistoll, wliich for the pur- 
pose was well charged witli two bullets : the op- 
portunitie oiFered, the pistoll bent, both heart and 
hand ready to doe the deed, when Coppinger, at 
the instant, snatched the pistoll from him, crying 
treason ; wherewith John Fitzthomas, turning 
himself about, perceived his intent. Nugent, 
thinking to escape by the goodnesse of his horse, 
spurred hard : the horse stumbled, and hee taken, 
and the next day after examination and confes- 
sion of his intent, hanged. This plot, although 
it attained not fully the desired successe, yet it 
proved to be of great consequence ; for now was 
John Fitzthomas possessed with such a jealous 
suspicion of every one, that he durst not remaine 
long at Loughgwire, for feare of some other like 
attempte." 

Dtrmot O'Connor, the traitor who undertook 
to betray Desmond, succeeded somewhat better 
He took an opportunity to arrest him and confine 
him in Castlelishin ; but would not give him up 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 189 

io the President until lie should first be paid a 
thousand pounds.* His wife, the Lady Marga- 
ret, was to meet Carew at Kilmallock, and re- 
ceive the money ; but before these pecuniary 
matters could be fully arranged Desmond was 
rescued by his kinsmen and Pierce Lacy of the 
Brough. Carew, however, was not deterred by 
one failure. " There was no man of account,*' 
says his secretary, " in all Mounster whom the 
President had not oftentimes laboured about the 
taking of the reputed earl, promising very boun- 
tiful and liberal rewards to all, or any such as 
would draw such a draught, whereby he might 
be gotten, alive or dead." At last the White 
Knight, a Geraldine, and kinsman of his own, 
was fortunate enough to draw the successful 
draught, delivered up the earl in safety to Carew, 
and received his thousand pounds.f The unfor- 
tunate " Suggawn earl'* was confined in Shandon 
castle for a time, and then forwarded to London, 
where he died in the Tower. 

O'Neill, who was kept fully employed in Ul- 
ster by Mount joy, began to perceive that the na- 
tional party in the South was fast breaking up. 
The religious toleration (though fcr a time not 
definite) by removing the common terror of per- 
secution, had allowed the ancient national animo- 
sities to revive ; and the nobles of Anglo-Nor- 
man descent were plainly not to be counted upon 
as faithful to the cause of Irish nationhood.^ On 



• Pac. Hib. t Pac. Hib. 

J " Of one thing I thinke good to give you particular 
notice, which is, not to put any confidence in any ot 



190 LIFE OF HUGH o'nF.ILL. 

Florence Mac Carthy, -vvhom he had made chief 
of Clan-Carrha, seems to have been placed 
O'NeiU's greatest reliance : — " Our commenda- 
tions to you, Mac Carthy More," thus he writes 
to Florence, " I send shortly unto you according 
X) our trust of you, that you will doe a stout and 
hopefull thing against the pagan beast ; and there- 
upon our armie is to goe into Mounster. * * 
And since this cause of Mounster was left to you 
(next under God) let no weakeness or imbecilli- 
tie bee found in you; and the time of help is 
neere you and all the reste. From Donganon, 
the sixth of February, 1601. 

" O'Neill." 

But Mac Carthy More's wife was also tre- 
panned into the English interest. " She refused," 
says Stafford, " to come to his bed until he had 
reconciled himself unto her Majestic." This lady 
was a daughter of the former Earl of Clancarty ; 
and " she knew," she said, "in what manner her 
father had that earldome from her highnesse ; and 
though she be not pleased to bestow the same 
wholly upon her, yet she doubted not to obtain 
some part thereof ; but if neither of these could 
be gotten, yet was not she minded to goe a beg- 
ging either unto Ulster, nor into Spaine."* And 

we soon find this chief trafficking and bargain- 
ing with the President, until Carew, having made 

• Pac. Hib. 

Mounster, of the English nation ■: for -wLt^rsoever they 
professe or protest unto you, they meane not to deale 
faithful]}' with us, but Avill forsake us in our greatest 
need." Letter of Corynac Carty to O'Neill. Pac. Hib. 



I.IFF or HUGH O'VFITX. jOl 

use of him so far as he could, at length seized 
his person, had an accusation of high treason 
preferred against him, and sent him a prisoner 
to England, along with the Earl of Desmond.* 

Carew having thus " tried the uttermost of his 
witt and cunning" to set at variance the heads of 
the southern confederacy, and so to destroy them 
by each other's means ; and besides, being stea- 
dily supported throughout by the Lords Clan- 
rickarde, Thomond, Barry, and other Anglo- 
Irish families, was soon enabled to overrun all 
Desmond, and to reduce, by force or treachery, 
the castles of Askeaton, Glynn, Carrig-a-foyle, 
Ardart, Liscaghan, Loughgwire, and many 
others, everywhere driving off the cattle, and 
burning the houses and corn stacks ; so that by 
the month of December there was not one castle 
in all Munster held against the queen ; nor, in 
the language of Moryson, " any company of ten 
rebels together." 

During the summer of 1600 Mountjoy himself 
had traversed Leix and O'Fally, with a nume- 
rous army, burning the country, until the 23d of 
August. He had the good fortune to kill O'More, 
of Leix, in a skirmish, and, after cutting down all 



* Pac. Hib. Moryson. Carew had strict commands from 
his government to get Florence into his hands ; ** which,'* 
he says, ' ' without some temporising could not yet con- 
veniently be performed." He therefore wrote to him to 
eay, that the "state was well persuaded of his loyaltie 
and innocencie," and requested him earnestly to visit 
liim, that he might have his advice about affairs of state. 
But all this was in vain until the lady was taken into the 
plot. 



192 LITE OF HUGH O NEILL. 

the green corn of the district, returned to Dublin. 
His biographer calculates that in this expedition 
he destroyed ten thousand pounds worth of corn ; 
and, at the same time, by the usual contri- 
vances, he detached some Leinster chiefs from 
the cause of Ireland, and introduced treachery 
and distrust into their councils. 

O'Neill and O'Donnell now fully understood 
the nature of the contest in which they were to 
be engaged with this new Deputy. Fraud, per- 
fidy, and assassination were to take the place of 
open battle ; the chink of gold was to be heard, 
instead of clashing steel ; and the swords of these 
false Saxons were to be turned into sickles, to 
prostrate the unripe grain, and so to war against 
women and children as well as fighting men. 
But the northern chiefs had still a gallant army 
at their backs, and were yet able to keep the 
English garrisons imprisoned within their walls 
and moats. They were in daily expectation of 
succour from King Philip, and hoped full soon to 
cut asunder the meshes of this traitor policy wild 
their good swords. 



TiTFfi OF HUGH O NETLL. 103 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE WAR IN UliSTER — THE SPANIARDS AT KIN- 
SALE — ^DEFEAT OP O'NEILIi AND o'dONNEIiL. 

A. D. 1600—1601. 

The powerful garrison of Derry, with the forts 
of Culmore, Dun-na-long, and Lifford, all in the 
hands of the English, and the revolted Niall 
Garb O'Donnell, with his adherents, gave abun- 
dant employment to the chieftain of Tyr-Connell, 
and effectually prevented him from joining 
O'Neill, with all the powers of his clan, as he 
had formerly been wont to do. Early this year, 
having defeated Dockwra, in a severe skirmish 
near Derry, and left a part of his force to watch 
the motions of that officer, the fiery chief him- 
self suddenly turned his face southward, tra- 
versed Connaught rapidly and silently, and once 
more swept all Thomond, from Corcomroe to 
Loop-head, covering with wreck and ruin the 
wide domains of tliat degenerate Dalcassian who 
styled himself Earl of Thomond.^ He had 
hardly driven off the spoil to Tyi'connell, before 
he learned that treachery and corruption were 

*0'Sullivan. Pac. Hibernia. 



194 LIFE OF HUCH o'nEILL. 

doing their work in Tnishowen, the northernmost 
corner of his territory. The O'Dogherty was 
dead, and many of that clan had declared for 
Docwra, who was supporting a pretender to the 
chieftaincy of Inishowen, in opposition to the 
rightful claimant. O'Donnell flew to Inishowen, 
but before he could do any thing effectual there 
he learned that the revolted Niall Garbh, with 
the help of a body of English, had taken posses- 
sion of the Franciscan monastery of Donegal, 
driven out the friars, and fortified the buildings. 
Red Hugh instantly marched to Donegal ; and 
laid siege to the abbey ; three months he sat be- 
fore it ; and at last, the buildings having taken 
fire by night, the garrison were obliged to fly 
from the raging flames and crashing roofs, upon 
the swords of their not less furious besiegers. 
Hundreds of the English troops and revolted Irish 
perished in the fire or the battle, (amongst others, 
Conn O'Donnell, brother of Niall Garbh,) and 
in the morning Red Hugh found himself master 
of the smoking and blackened ruins of that beau- 
tiful and illustrious abbey.* 

To guard the southern frontier of Ulster was 
Hugh O'Neill's own peculiar care, and all the 
efforts of the Deputy were bent to penetrate that 
frontier by way of Dundalk and Armagh. On 
the 15th of September, he encamped at Faug- 
hart, three miles north of Dundalk, with an 



• This abbey was never repaired ; and its rifted walli 
and fast-decayinp^ arches, the once-famous library and 
cloisters of the Four Masters, are now a grey and lonely 
ruin, at the head of the lovely bay of Donegal. 



LIFE OF HUGH O NEILL. 195 

army of 2,400 foot and 300 horse,* intending so 
soon as the weather would permit, to make a 
grand attempt upon the Moyry Pass. O'Neill 
had the pass entrenched, fortified with palisades, 
and strongly manned, f and was waiting patiently 
in the woods for the approach of Mountjoy. At 
last on the 9th of October the English army ad- 
vanced, and after some severe fighting and heavy 
loss on both sides, Mountjoy forced his way 
through. He then cut down the woods and 
cleared the country all round that difficult pass 
and made his way to Newry. His chief object 
was to regain Armagh ; and on the 2nd of No- 
vember he marched from Newry about eight 
miles to the north-west ; and then finding the 
country that lay between him and Armagh too 
difficult and too well guarded by O'Neill, to be 
attempted in that season, he determined to build 
a fort on the place where he then was, being the 
very entrance of the dangerous Moyry Pass, so 
as to secure the ground he had won, and effec- 
tually open up that way into Ulster for the 
English armies. This work was not effected 
without daily alarms from O'Neill's men ; but, 
at length the fort was built. The Deputy called 
it Mount Norris, in honour of Sir John Norreys, 
bis former master in the art of war, left 400 men 
Under Captain Blaney, to garrison it, and re* 
tired to Newry on his way to the Pale.J 

Before leaving Ulster, M^ountjoy solemnly made 
proclamation of a great reward for the head of 
O'Neill — two thousand pounds to the man wiio 

• Morj'&on. \ Camden. % Moryson. 



196 LIFE OF HUGH o'neILL.. 

should bring in that " arch-rebel" alive — one 
thousand for his dead body ; and then the De- 
puty marched by Fatham and Carlingford to- 
wards Dundalk. At the "Pass of Carlingford,'* 
however, (probably at Glenmore or Riverstown,) 
O'Neill was upon him again. A bloody battle 
ensued. Mountjoy himself. Sir Henry Dan vers, 
and many other officers were severely wounded,* 
and with heavy loss the English made good their 
way to Dundalk. Mountjoy proceeded to Dublin 
and made no further attempt upon the North 
that year, the sole achievement of the campaign 
being the stationing of Blaney's garrison upon 
the Moyry. Armagh, Portmore, and all the 
open country north of Newry were still in the 
hands of the Irish. 

That winter was spent by Mountjoy in vain 
efforts to crush or capture the gallant Tyrrell, 
who still held a great part of Meath for O'Neill. 
The Deputy marched to Trim and Athlone, 
burning and wasting the country on all sides, 
and having offered large rewards for Tyrrell's 
head, returned to Dublin.")" 

The following spring saw the indefatigable 
Deputy once more at the Moyry. On the 8th 
of June, he led his army through the pass, and, 
having erected some additional works at the 
" Three-mile-water," proceeded to Newry ; then 
harried Iveagh, the country of Mac Gennis, took 
Downpatrick, and returned to Newry on the 
21st. A powerful force under Sir Henry Dan- 
rers, was then detached and sent against Armagli. 

• Morysoa. f ^^' 



LIFE OF HUGH o'neILI*. 1*17 

^Mtli orders to take possession of the city, and 
abbey, and garrison them for the queen. O'Neill, 
however, had all the passes manned, and gave 
Danvers such a reception that he was fain to 
take shelter behind the works of Mount Norris, 
and wait there till the Deputy joined him.* 
When Mountjoy came up, the English army ad- 
vanced northward in force ; and O'Neill after 
some skirmishing in the woods, retired before 
the enemy and fell back upon the Blackwater, 
resolving to give them battle on the banks 
of that illustrious river. Mountjoy, however, 
had no intention of penetrating farther for that 
time ; he contented himself with making a mi- 
nute survey of the battle-ground of Beal-dn^ 
atha-buidhe, where the blood of Sir Henry 
Bagnal and many a gallant Englishman had 
" manured the reeking sod" three years before ; 
spent a considerable time, one can hardly tell 
with what object,f in examining the various po- 
sitions around that memorable plain, and on the 
southern bank of the Blackwater (which the 
English, says O' Sullivan, called Black by reason 
of their many defeats sustained there,) then di- 

• Moryson. 

f Unless it were that this "bookish" general desired 
to fancy himself a second Germanicus, and to imitate 
that leader when he penetrated the woods of nortli Ger- 
many, and discovered the spot wliere Arminius had de- 
stroyed the Varian legions, on the banks of the Elbe. 
There were indeed some points of resemblance — "Medic 
campi albentia ossa, ut fugerant, ut restiterant, dis- 
jecta velaggerata: adjacebant fragmina telorum, equo- 
rumque artus" — "hie cecidis.se legates: illicraptas aqui- 
las; priraum ubi vulnus Varo adactura," &c. 



198 LTFK OF TlUCn O'^JKTKT^ 

rected his march uj^on Armngli, whidi was 
Cibandoned by tlie Irish on his approach ; sta- 
tioned there 750 foot and 100 horse under Dan- 
vers, and returned by Mount Norris to Newry, 

Shortly after, Mountjoy advanced again to 
the Blackwater, made himself master of the dis- 
mantled fortress of Portmore, repaired it, and 
stationed three hundred and fifty men there, un- 
der Captain Williams, the ancient defender of 
that dangerous post. The several garrisons no%v 
occupying northern forts (exclusive of Dockwra's 
large army in the north-west), are thus stated 
by an English historian. In Newry there were 
four hundred foot and fifty horse, under Sir 
Francis Stafford ; in Lecale (Down) three hun- 
dred foot, under Sir Richard Moryson, brother 
to the Deputy's secretary and historiographer; Sir 
Arthur Chichester held Carrickfergus, with eight 
hundred and fifty foot and one hundred and twenty- 
five horse ; in Mountnorris were six hundred foot 
and fifty horse, commanded by Sir Samuel Bagnal ; 
eight hundred foot and one hundred and twenty- 
five horse, under Danvers, garrisoned Armagh ; 
and Williams, with three hundred and fifty men, 
keot Portmore. These strong parties, entrenched 
behind their fortifications, abundantly supplied 
with artillery, aramunition, and provisions, were 
well able to withstand any attacks of the impe- 
tuous, but unskilful and impatient Irish, and 
occasionally sallying into the country, burned 
the houses, drove off the cattle, cut down and 
trampled the corn, cleared passages through the 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILl. 199 

woods, and betook themselves to their strong 
places again, when threatened hy a superior 
force. 

Next to establishing these garrisons. Mount- 
joy's care was to cut away and clear the woods 
which encumbered all the passes lying betweer 
Newry and the Blackwater, so as to secure a 
better passage for his troops. In this dangerous 
service he employed a great par*> of his army for 
many days ; and on the 24th of August, having 
strengthened and revictualled the forts of Port- 
more and Armagh, he once more withdrew 
towards the Pale. 

O'Neill was continually in "the field, flying 
from place to place, cutting off the English work- 
ing parties in the woods, and bands of their cruel 
reapers in the corn-fields ; often his fierce war- 
cry scared the builders from their unfinished 
walls ; and often, with rout and havoc, the bri- 
gand forayers of P^ngland were pursued by his 
avenging sword home to their very entrench- 
ments.* Yet it must be admitted that English 
arms and English policy were at length making 
some way in this northern land. Ten thousand 
British troops upon the soil of Ulster — nume- 
rous garrisons and castler on both the Foyle 
and Blackwater — the sleepless energy, masterly 
dispositions, and hateful policy of Lord Moun- 
joy, had indeed begun to tell ; and darkness 
once more seemed to brood over the cause of old 
Ireland. Still, the cause could not seem hopeless 



200 LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 

to the Ulster chieftains. The Spaniard, they 
trusted, was even then off Cape Clear ; or if no 
help from King Philip, the ancient standard of 
the Bloody H/»,Tid still floated free over the hills 
of Tyr-owen ; ihe proud river-frontier of the 
Blackwater \ras still inviolate. 

Spanish negotiators had been with O'Neill and 
0' L)onnell for some months. Matthew of Oviedo, 
the Archbishop of Dublin, made a visit to the 
North to confer with the chiefs, and afterwards 
set sail for Spain to hasten the embarkation ; and 
it was now well known both to friend and foe 
that a powerful armament had been prepared in 
the ports of Spain, and was under orders for 
Ireland. In August came a letter from Sir 
Robert Cecil, the English Secretary of State, to 
Sir George Carew, apprising him " that certaine 
pinnaces of her Majestie's had met with a fleete 
of Spaniards, to the number of fiftie sale, whereof 
seventeene were men of warre, the rest trans- 
porting ships :" they had been descried at the 
Scilly islands, " and could not bee," said Sir 
Robert, " but for Ireland."* 

On the twenty-third day of September, Lord 
Mountjoy and th.e President Carew were sitting 
in council in Kilkenny, with the Earl of Or- 
mond. Sir Richard Wingfield, Marshal of the 
Queen's army, and Sir Robert Gardiner, trie 
Chief Justice, " advising what course should be 
taken if the Spaniards should lande." Suddenly 
a letter arrived from Sir Charles Wiliuot, tlieu 

• Pac. Hib. 



MFE OF HUGH o'nEIIJ*. 201 

commanding in Cork, to announce that a fleet 
had been seen otF the harbour of Cork ; and 
again, before their council broke up, another 
hasty messenger from Wilmot brought news that 
the Spaniards were at anchor in the harbour of 
Kinsale. Instantly couriers were despatched by 
Lord Mountjoy through Leinster and the North, 
to draw together most of the troops scattered in 
various garrisons, and concentrate the whole 
English force upon Munster. Letters were sent 
to Sir Charles Wilmot with instructions, and 
despatches to England with urgent demand of 
new reinforcements. 

The Spanish fleet when it weighed anchor 
from the Tagus mouth, consisted of forty five small 
vessels, carrying about six thousand men. Of 
their ships, only seventeen carried guns ; eleven 
of these were small, and only six of the class 
called Galleons, the St. Paul, the St. Peter, the 
St. Andrew, and three others whose namas are 
Dot given. The troop-ships were mostly of one 
hundred and one hundred and fifty tons burthen ; 
and fifteen hundred Biscayan sailors manned the 
whole fleet.* Even this force was much shattered 
and diminished by a storm, which drove a squa- 
dron of their ships ashore at Coruna ; and by the 
time they landed in Kinsale, there were but three 
thousand four hundred soldiers, and many of 
tbcse Besognies who had never handled arms ;f 

• Thpse particulars are contained in an official state- 
tneui, eent by Sir Robert Cecil's correspondent in Lis- 
bon, and transmitted by Oecil to the Loni President.— 
Pac. Hib. 

tP&c.H'A 



202 UFE OF HUGH o'NEILL,. 

SO that on the whole, it was a much cmaller ar- 
mament than O'Neill had reason to expect, infe- 
rior both in numbers and strength even to Sir 
Henry Dockwra's fleet and army in Lough Foyle, 
and wholly inadequate to the important service 
it was destined for. 

What was even worse than this, Don Juan 
D'Aguila, the general to whom Philip had en- 
trusted the command, seems to have been unequal 
to such an enterprize. He had commanded a 
Spanish force in Bretagne in 15&4, and is charged 
with having tamely allov/ed the French and En- 
glish to capture Morlaix and Quimper, without 
an effort to relieve them ; and at Crodon, a fort 
which defended the mouth of Brest harbour, 
after exposing a brave garrison to destruction 
through his incompetence and cowardice, he 
yielded that most important position which he 
liad ample means to defend ;* — a mournful omen 
for unhappy Ireland. 

Immediately on disembarking, Don Juan sent 
messengers to the two northern princes advising 

• Matthew O'Conor {Military Memoirs of the Irish Na- 
'ion) gives this story at length, out of Davila. He also 
^ensures Don Juan severely for landing in Munster, in- 
stead of making for some northern or v. c?tern port ; but 
this charge is not well founded. It was evidently with 
tlie concurrence of O'Neill and O'Donnell tliat a southern 
jiort was selected. The Irish chiefs were probably theni- 
s Ives deceived as to the strength of thei"r party in tlie 
sxith, and the faithfulness of their allies. O'Neill relied 
much upon the Clan Carrha and Florence Mac Garthy, 
and could hardly anticipate that so powerful a confede- 
nic} would be dissolved so soon by mere fraud, treachery, 
^nd bribery, ^eithout a blow struck. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 203 

them of his arrival, and requesting tliein to come 
and join him without delay ; and in the mean 
time the Spaniards marched into Kinsale with 
five and twenty colours flying ; the English gar- 
rison retired to Cork ; and the sovereign of the 
town threw open the gates, went to meet the 
strangers, and proceeded to billet them ; " more 
ready" says Stafford, " than if they had been the 
queene's forces." To set the town's people at 
ease, Don Juan issued the following proclama- 
tion. " Wee Don Juan De Aguila, Generall of 
the Armie to Philip king of Spaine, by these 
presents doe promise that all the inhabitants of 
the towne of Kinsale shall receive no injury by 
any of our retinew, but rather shall be used as 
our brethren and friends, and that it shall be law- 
ful for any ol the inhabitants that list to trans- 
port, without any molestation in body or goods, 
and as much as shall remain, likewise without any 
hurt. Signed Don Juan De Aguila."* He then 
took possession of the forts which protected the 
entrance of Kinsale harbour, called Rincorran,f 
and Castle-ne-parke ; fortified and garrisoned 
them, and expected to be immediately joined in 
great force by the Irish of all the surrounding 
country. 

But national feeling had nearly gone out of 
Munster. All the Anglo-Irish lords, and most 
of the ancient Irish had made their submission 
to the President: the chiefs and leaders were 



• Pac. Hib. 

f A scythe blade. It was built on a tongue of land 
resembling a scythe in shape. 



204 LIFE OF HUGU o'keILL. 

"either corrupted by English gold, or intimidated, 
or disgusted by the treachery of their allies, or 
imprisoned in the dungeons of London. In 
truth, O'NeiU's noble effort to make a nation 01.1 
of the miserable materials which Munster afforded 
him to work with, was a total failure. National 
honour, religious zeal, even thirst for ven- 
geance, was dead amongst them : — one is forced 
to believe that these southern Irish, " were 
pigeon-livered, and lacked gall, to make oppres- 
sion bitter ;" the chivalrous Spaniards began 
to conceive a boundless contempt for them; — 
tljey thought, for their parts, that " Christ had 
never died" for such a people as this. 

Of all the Munster Irish, only O' Sullivan 
Heare, O'Connor Kerry, and O'Driscol, declared 
openly for Ireland and King Philip ; Carew and 
Mountjoy were marching upon Kin sale, with all 
their forces : three thousand one hundred fresh 
troops arrived from England ; a fleet of ten ships 
of war, under admiral Sir Richard Leviston, 
appeared upon the coast, and disembarked two 
thousand more at Cork ; all the towns of Mun- 
eter, when called upon by Carew, contributed 
with alacrity their quotas to the queen's forces.* 
the earls of Thomond, and Clanrickarde, with 
their numerous Irish following, lifted their ban- 

• Dr. Curry, strangely enough, notes this circum- 
stauce as a merit in the Irish towns. He says, " It ia 
'worthy of notice that all the cities and towns in the 
^tmgdom,. though chiefly inliabited by the Catholic na- 
tives, oontlnued loyal to the queen during this war." — 
Ueinew of the Civil Wars. Nearly two-thirds of Mount 
joy's army consisted of Irishmen. 



l^IFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 206 

Ders on the sume sitle ; and in the month of 
November, the Deputy and President sat down 
betbre Kinsale. commanding a mixed English and 
Irish army, fifteen thousand strong. 

News of the Spanish landing soon reached 
Ulster ; and suddenly, with one consent all mi- 
litary operations were suspended on both sides ; — 
siege and foray, fortifying and ambuscading, all 
stood still ; every eye turned to Munster ; every 
nerve was braced for the trial of this mighty 
issue at Kinsale. Don Juan's messengers found 
Red Hugh O'Donnell besieging his own noble 
tastle of Donegal, which bad been in his absence, 
surprized by the " queen's O'Donnell," Nlall 
Garbh, and his Saxon allies. Without one 
hoar's delay, he arose with all his clan, left the 
castle to its fate for that time and marched into 
Connaught. At Ballymote he halted, and sum- 
moned all his tributaries and adherents to attend 
him there, and range themselves under the stan- 
dard of Tyrconnell. From Inishowen and Kil- 
macrenan, — from BrefFni and Sligo, Hy Fiachra, 
Hy Maine and Coolavin, the clans came trooping ; 
— O'Ruarcs and Mac Swynes, O'Dogherty's, 
O'Boyles, Mac Donoughs, Mac Dermots, O'Con- 
nors, O'Kellys, and many another warlike north' 
western tribe ; and on tlie second of November, 
ha set forth for Munster at the head of two thou- 
sand five hundred men. 

O'Neill "instantly drew off his forces from the 
petty skirmishing upon the Blackwater ; sent to 
Antrim for the Mac Donnells, to Down for Mac 
Gennis and Mac Artane, and was speedily on his 
mc\rcn southward with between three and four 



2U(J LIFE OF HUGH o'NEtLL. 

tliousaiid troops. O'Donnell and he were to have 
met at Holy-Cross in Ormond ; and the army of 
Tyrconnell being first at the rendezvous, en- 
:;ainped in a place where they were protected on 
all sides by woods and bogs.* The Deputy now 
detached Carew with a strong force against 
O'Donnell, hoping to engage him before O'NeiU 
should come up. Red Hugh was not prepared 
to give battle ; and he soon found that he must 
either retreat northwards again and abandon the 
Spaniards, or make a forced march over the 
mountains of Slieve Felim, which lay between 
him and Limerick. There had lately been heavy 
rains ; and the mountains were so wet and boggy, 
that no horses or carriages could pass. The Pre- 
sident and his army lay at Cashel, and thought 
they had effectually checked O'Donnell's ad- 
vance ; when, one night, a sharp frost occurred, 
which he knew would harden the surface of 
the earth and make the mountains passable for 
a time. So soon as darkness came on, the whole 
Irish army suddenly arose, traversed the rugged 
country all that night, and by day-break were 
more than twenty miles from Holy Cross. Ca- 
rew made great exertions to intercept him be- 
fore he should reach Kinsale ; but in vain. Pie 
^eems to have been amazed at the expedition of 
" this light-footed generall ;" and computes that 
one day's march from O'JMagher's country to 
Crome," at above two and thirty Irish miles, 
•' the greatest march, with carriage," he says, 

* " A strong fastnesse of bogg and wood, which was 
ou every quarter plashed." — Pac. Hib. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 207 

" that hath been heard of."* O'Donnell tlien 
made a circuit to the westward, marched through 
Muskerry, to stir up the southern clans, and ar- 
rived at Castlehaven in time to form a junction 
with seven hundred Spaniards, who had arrived 
in that port and were destined to reinforce 
D'Aguila in Kinsale.f 

Many of the Irish of West Munster who had 
been hitherto inactive, when they saw the north- 
ern forces, and heard of the new landing of Spa- 
niards, at length bestirred themselves. Donogh 
O'Driscol at once received a Spanish garrison 
into his castle of Castlehaven which commanded 
that harbour ; Sir Finnan O'Driscol admitted a 
hundred and twenty Spaniards into his castles of 
Donneshed at Baltimore, and Donnelong on Inis- 
herkan island, which between them completely 
defended the harbour of Baltimore ; and Donal 
0\Sullivan received two hundred Spanish auxi- 
liaries under his command, declared for Ireland 
and King Philip, and manned and strengthened 
his castle of Dun-buidhe situated on Beare-haven. 

In the mean time Lord Mountjoy and Carew 
were vigorously pressing the siege of Kinsale. 
Cannon were planted against the castle of Rir.- 
corran ; and after an obstinate defence, it was at 

* Fac. Hib. 

t The transport ships which had carried this reinforce 
nient were attacked by the English fleet, under Levi* 
tv)n, in tlie harbour of Castlehaven, and after a shar{» 
fight, some of tliem were taken or sunk. But tlie Spa- 
nish batteries from the shore handled the English ships 
so roughly that the admiral's own ship was riddled 
" througli'hulke, maste, and tackle," and returned mucb 
shattered to Ivinsale — Pec. Hib. 



203 LIFE OF HUGH O^JSEILL. 

length yielded, and its garrison taken prisoners 
and sent to Cork. When the royal fleet arrived 
under Admiral Leviston, they began to batter 
Castle-ne-parke from their ships ; but at first 
without success. A few days after, however, this 
out-work was also taken, its defenders having ren- 
dered it up on promise of their lives : and then 
Don Juan was confined entirely to the walls of 
Kinsale. It was resolved by the English com- 
manders in a council of war not to attempt mak- 
ing a breach until they should first have destroyed 
the houses in the town by bombardment ; and 
with this view the trenches were drawn closer ; 
cannon were placed in various positions near the 
walls, and a tremendous fire kept up for several 
days. A trumpeter was then sent to summon the 
place to surrender, who was not suffered to enter 
the town, but received his answer at the gate : — 
" Don Juan held that town, first for Christ, and 
then for the King of Spain, and so would defend 
it against all their enemies." Once more the 
English artillery thundered upon the walls. Se- 
veral desperate sorties were made by the Spa- 
niards, and many men were killed on both sides. 
The English pressed the siege with greater vi- 
gour than ever, because they had intelligence that 
O'Neill and O'Donnell had at length formed a 
junction, and were approaching Kinsale from tlie 
north-eastern quarter upon the left bank of Ban- 
don river, and on the 19th of December the van- 
guard of O'NeiU's army, were seen upon a hill 
about a mile distant from Mountjoy's camp. 

By desperate exertions O'Neill had collectec? 
nearly four thousand men, had fought his vfn^ 



LIFIs OP HUGH 0*NEILL. 209 

flirouffh West Meath, and, joined by the indefa- 
tigable Tyrrell, had traversed Leinster and Or- 
immd by forced marches. At Bandon he met 
with O'Donnell and the Spaniards who had land- 
ed in Castlehavcn ; and now at length he found 
himself on the scene of action, and beheld the 
beleagured town of Kinsale, and the powerful 
fleet and army which invested it by sea and land. 
On the 21st O'Neill so disposed the Irish forces 
as to cut off all communication between Mountjoy 
and that part of the country from whence he was 
accustomed to receive his supplies. The whole 
force under O'Neill and O'Donnell amounted to 
no more than six thousand foot and five hundred 
horse,* and with so small an army O'Neill had 
no intention of immediately risking a general en- 
gagement. The English army was fast weaken- 
ing by sickness and desertion : the soldiers of 
Irish race were leaving Mountjoy's ranks by 
troops ; the Spaniards were still strong in Kin- 
sale ; and he hoped that the severity of the sea- 
son, aided by privation and continual skirmishing 
would soon so waste and wear down the enemy 
that he might choose his own time for falling 
upon them and finishing their ruin. O'Donnell, 
indeed; with his usual impetuosity, burned to let 
loose the Clan-Conal upon Mountjoy's camp ; but 
yielding to his more experienced ally he re- 
strained himself and acquiesced in the more cau- 
tious policy. 

*' Our artillery," says Stafford, " still played 
opon the towne (as it had done all that while) 

• Fac. Hib. 



210 i^iFE or HUGH o'neill. 

that they might see wee went on with our busi- 
nesse as if wee cared not for Tyrone's comming : 
but it was withall carried on in such a fashion as 
we had no meaning to make a breach, because 
we thought it not fit to offer to enter, and so put 
all in a hazard untill we might better discover 
what Tyrone meant to doe, whose strength was 
assured to bee very great ; and we found by let- 
ters of Don John's (which wee had newly inter- 
cepted) that hee had advised Tyrone to sett upon 
our campes, telling him that it could not bee 
chosen, but our men were much decayed by the 
winter's siege, and so that wee could hardly bee 
able to maintain so much ground (as wee had 
taken) when our strength was greater, if wee 
were well put to, on the one side by them, and 
on the other side by him, which hee would not 
faile for his parte to doe soundly."* 

Such was indeed Don Juan's counsel ; but 
O'Neill was resolved to let Kinsale and the Spa- 
niards bear the brunt of the siege a little longer ; 
to rest and refresh his troops after their severe 
marching ; and to persist in his policy of besieg- 
ing the besiegers in their own entrenchments, 
until circumstances should arise to make a change 
of plan advisable. f 

The Irish, however, had been but three days 
before Kinsale, when an accident brought on a 
general engagement, before there was time to 
(oncert measures with the Spaniards in the town. 
It is far from being clearly explained how this 
battle of Kinsale came to be fought, without pre« 

* Pac. Hib. t Moryson, 



LIFE OP HUGH ONEILL. 211 

meditation as it seems on the part of the com- 
manders on either side :* but, before dawn in 
the morning of the 24th, Sir Richard Graham, 
who commanded that night the guard of horse, 
sent word to the Deputy that the scouts had dis- 
covered the matches of the Irishf flashing in great 
numbers through the darkness, and that O'Neill 
must be approaching the camp in force. In- 
stantly the troops were called to arms: messen- 
gers were dispatched to the Earl of Thomond's 
quarter with orders to draw out his men. The 
Deputy now advanced to meet the Irish whom 
he supposed to be stealing upon his camp : and 
seems to have effectually surprised them, while 
endeavouring to prevent a surprise upon himself. 
The infantry of O'NeiU's army retired slowly 
about a mile farther from the town, and made a 
stand on the banks of a ford where their position 

* The author of the Pacata Hihernia says that Brian 
Mac Hugh Oge Mac Mahon, one of O'Neill's trusted of- 
ficers, entered into communication with Carew ou the 
previous day ; that he cautioned him to be on his guard 
the following night ; for that it had been determined in 
the Irish council of war, where he was present, that on 
the next night, shortly before day-break, a simultaneous 
attack should be made upon the English camp by the 
Spaniards in front, and by the Irish army in the rere j 
that this Mac Mahon was induced to give the informa- 
tion because his son had once been brought up in Ca- 
rew 's family as a page ; and that the attack was made, 
or about to be made, in strict accordance with the warn- 
ing. But in fact the Spaniards did not sally from th^ 
walls at all during the battle, and hardly seem to have 
been aware of it until all was over, which could not have 
been the case if it had been brought on by previous con» 
cert. 

t The fire-arms of that period were matchlocks. 



212 LIFE OF HUGH o'NE1L1« 

was strengthened by a bog in flank. Wingfield, 
the Marshal, thought he saw some confusion in 
their ranks, and entreated the Deputy that he 
might be allowed to charge. The Earl of Clan- 
rickarde joined the Marshal, and the battle be- 
came general ; but O'Neill's cavalry repeatedly 
drove back both Wingfield and Clanrickarde, 
until Sir Henry Danvers, with Captains Taaffe 
and Fleming came up to their assistance ; when 
at length the Irish infantry fell into confusion 
and fled. Another body of them, commanded 
by Tyrrell was still unbroken, and long main- 
tained its ground upon a hill ; but at length see- 
ing their comrades routed, they also gave way 
and retreated in good order after their main 
body. The northern cavalry covered the retreat ; 
and O'Neill and O'Donnell, by amazing personal 
exertions, succeeded in preserving order and pre- 
venting it from becoming a total rout. 

The Spaniards who had joined O'Donnell at 
Castlehaven, refused to leave the ground, and were 
nearly all cut to pieces ; their commander, Del 
Campo, was taken prisoner with two of his officers, 
and about forty soldiers : but the Irish troops 
although to them no quarter was given,* retired 
with comparatively little loss. According to 
Carew's statement there were, of the Irish army, 
twelve hundred killed and eight hundred wounded; 

* The most merciless of all Mountjoy's army that day 
was the Anglo-Irish and Catholic Earl of Clanrickarde. 
He slew twenty of the Irish with his own hand, and cried 
aloud to spare no "rebels." Carew says that " no man 
did hloody Ms sword more than his lordship that day." 
l>ac. Hih. 



LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 213 

?,nd of bis own, but six or seven persons in all ; 
a disparity which in itself proves that O'Neill's 
troops were taken by surprise and had not in- 
tended to fight that day. But it avails little to 
plead surprise in excuse for a lost battle : — the 
battle was lost : the Irish camp was in the hands 
of the enemy : their plans were completely de- 
ranged, and most of their colours, arms, and bag- 
gage captured. It was now tba depth of winter, 
and too late to prepare for a new campaign that 
year : and O'Neill was reluctantly compelled to 
order a retreat to the North, leaving Kinsale and 
Don Juan to their fate. 

On the last day of December Don Juan sent 
IHountjoy proposals for a capitulation ;* obldined 
honourable terms ; agreed to surrender all the 
castles upon the coast into which Spanish garri- 
sons had been admitted, and shortly after set 
sail for Spain ; carrying with him all his artillery, 
treasure and military stores. 

O'Neill and the remainder of his army set out 
on their homeward march ; but Red Hugh 

* In his negotiations with Mountjoy Don Juan aflfecta 
to speak most contemptuously of O'Neill and O'Donnell, 
and the whole Irish nation ; but if he had better known 
tlie country, he would have been aware that the exer- 
tions of the northern chiefs to relieve him, when shut 
up in Kinsale, at such a distance from Ulster, were al- 
most superhuman. Besides, he ought to have remem- 
bered the terms of the requisition upon which the Spa- 
niards came to Ireland — " If the aides were sent to Ul- 
ster, then Tyrone re c^uired but fower or five thousand 
men : if the king did purpose to send an army into 
Mounster, then he should send strongly, because neithef 
Tyrone nor O'Donnell could come to help Chen." — Pec ' 
Hib. p. 456. 



?14 LIFE OF HUGH o'NEILL 

O'Donnell, stung to madness by defeat, indign&n- 
at the conduct of this most ill-judged enterprise, 
and impatient of King Philip's dilatory councils 
and petty expeditions, gave the command of his 
elan to his brother Roderick ; and three days 
after the battle, flung himself into a Spanish ship 
0t Castlehaven, and, attended by Redmond Burke, 
Hugh Mostian, and seven other Irish gentlemen, 
set sail for Spain. He disembarked at Coruna, 
was received with high distinction, by the Mar- 
quis of Cara9ena and other nobles, " who ever- 
more gave O'Donnell the right hand ; which, 
within his government," says Carew, " he would 
not have done to the greatest duke in Spaine." 
He travelled through Gallicia, and at Santiago 
de Compostella was royally entertained by the 
archbishop and citizens ; but in bulUfighting, or 
the stately Alameda, he had small pleasure. 
With teeth set and heart on fire, the chief- 
tain hurried on, traversed the mountains of Ga- 
licia and Leon, and drew not bridle until he 
reached Zamora, where Philip was then hold- 
ing his court. With passionate zeal he pleaded 
his country's cause ; entreated that a greater 
fleet and stronger army might be sent to Ire- 
land without delay, unless his Catholic Ma- 
jesty desired to see his ancient Milesian kinsman 
and allies utterly destroyed and trodden into 
earth by the tyrant Elizabeth ; and above all 
vvhatever was to be done he prayed it might be 
done instantly, while O'Neill still held his army 
on foot, and liis banner flying ; while it was not 
yet too late to rescue poor Erin from the deadl) 
fangs of those dogs of England. The king ro- 



JjTfb of hxtgh o'netll. 215 

ceived him affectionately, treated him with high 
consideration^ and actually gave orders for a 
powerful force to be drawn together at Coruna, 
lor another descent upon Ireland.* 

But that armament never sailed; and poor 
O'Donnell never saw Ireland more; for news 
arrived in Spain, a few months after, that Dun- 
buidhe castle, the last strong-hold in Munster 
that held out for King Philip, was taken; and 
Beare-haven, the last harbour in the South that 
was open to his ships, effectually guarded by the 
Enghsh: and the Spanish preparations were 
countermanded : and Ked Hugh was once more 
on his journey to the court, to renew his ahnost 
hopeless suit; and had arrived at Simancas, two 
leagues from Valladohd, when he suddenly fell 
sick; his gallant heart was broken, and he died 
there, on the iOth of September, 1602. He was 
buried by order of the king, royal honours, 
a& behtted a prince of the Kinel-Conal; and the 
stately city of VaUadolid, holds the bones of as 
noble a chief and as stout a warrior as ever bore 
the wand of chieftaincy, or led a clan to battle. 

* Pac. Hib. 



2^3 UFE OF UUGH o'N£1LL» 



CHAPTER XV. 

FIRE, FAMINE, AND SLAUGHTER o'nEIUi AT 

MEJLLIFONT. 

A. D. 1602—1603. 

After another severe winter journey, O'Neill 
gained bis own territory ; he knew that he might 
shortly expect Mountjoy once more at the Black- 
water ; and employed the interval in disposing 
his men, so as best to guard the passes of the 
woods, and preparing for this last fierce struggle ; 
for he determined to dispute every foot of ground, 
and to sell life and land dear. 

Mountjoy spent that spring in Munster, with 
the President, reducing those fortresses which 
still remained in the hands of the Irish, and 
fiercely crushing down every vestige of the na- 
tional war. Richard Tyrrell, however, still kept 
the field ; and O' Sullivan Beare held his strong 
castle of Dun-buidhe, which he wrested from tlie 
Spaniards after Don Juan bad stipulated to yield 
it to the enemy.* This castle commanded Ban- 

* "Among other places, which were neither yielded 
nor taken to the end they should be deUvered to tlie 
English, Don Juan tied himself to deliver my castle and 
haveu, the only key of mine in)»-^ritaace,, Thereupon 



XliE OF II LC 11 o'neILL. 217 

tiy Bay, nnd was one of the most important for- 
tresses in Munster ; and therefore Carew deter- 
mined, at whatever cost, to make himself master 
of it. Dun-buidhe was but a square tower, with 
a court-yard and some out-works, and had but 
140 men ; yet it was so strongly situated, and so 
bravely defended, that it held the Lord President 
and an army of four thousand men, with a great 
train of artillery and some ships of war, fifteen 
days before its walls. After a breach was made, 
the storming parties were twice driven back to 
their lines ; and even after the great hall of the 
castle was carried, the garrison, under their in- 
domitable commander, Mac Geohegan, held tlieir 
ground in the vaults underneath for a whole day, 
and at last fairly beat the besiegers out of the 
hall. The English cannon then played furiously 
upon the wails ; and the president swore to bury 
these obstinate Irish under the ruins. Again a 
desperate sortie was made by forty men — they 
were all slain : eight of them leaped into the sea 
to save themselves by swimming ; but Carew, 
anticipating this, had stationed Captain Harvey, 
" with three boats to keepe the sea, who had the 
killing of them all ;" and at last, after Mac Geo- 
hegan was mortally wounded, the remnant of the* 
garrison laid down their arms. Mac Geohegan 
lay, bleeding to death, on the floor of the vault ; 



the living of many thousand persons doth rest, that live 
some twenty leagues upon the sea-coast, into the hands 
of my cruell, cursed, misbelieving enemies." — Letter 
of Donal O'Suliivan Beare to the King of Spain. Pac. 



218 LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 

yet when be saw the besiegers admitted, he raisecl 
himself up, snatched a lighted torch, and stag- 
gered to an open powder-barrel — one moment, 
and the castle, with all it contained, would have 
rushed skyward in a pyramid of flame, when 
suddenly an English soldier seized him in his 
arms : he was killed on the spot, and all the re.^i 
tvere shortly after executed. " The whole num- 
ber of the ward," says Carew, " consisted of one 
hundred and forty-three selected men, being the 
best choice of all their forces, of which not one 
man escaped, but were either slain, executed, or 
buried in the ruins ; and so obstinate a de- 
fence hath not been seen within this kingdom." 
Perhaps some will think that the survivors of 
so brave a band deserved a better fate than 
hanging. 

But we must leave this ferocious Carew and 
his willing assistants, Wilmot and Harvey, to 
their terrible vocation. Space would fail us to 
recount what castles they took, what priests they 
hanged : how they laid waste the lands, and de- 
stroyed the corn, and covered Munster with ashes 
and blood, and smoking ruins.* The war had 
once more rolled northward 

• O'SuUivan and Tyrrell still kept the field, and made 
themselves masters of some castles. They were encou . 
raged by Owen Mac Egan, the apostolic vicar ; by let- 
ters from O'Neill, and the hope of O'Donnell's return 
with help from Spain. But when news came of O'Don- 
nell's death, O'SuUivan, with four hundred men, set out 
for the north, intending to take refuge with O'Neill. 
They crossed the Shannon in corraghs, covered with the 
hides of their own horses, fought their way througv. the 
hostile country of Thomond and ClanricKanie, and at 



lliB OF HUGH o'nEILL. 219 

Early in June Lord Mountjoy marched by 
Dundalk to Armagh, and from thence, without 
interruption, to the banks of the Blackwater, 
about five miles to the eastward of Portmore, and 
nearer to Lough Neagh.* He sent Sir Richard 
Moryson to the north bank of the river, com- 
menced the building of a bridge at that point, 
and a castle, which he named Charlemont, from 
bis own Christian name, and stationed a garrison 
of one hundred and fifty men there, under the 
command of a certain Captain Toby Caulfield.l 

The Deputy then led his whole army across 
the river, and set out on his march for Dungan- 
non ; but long before he reached it he could 
plainly see both town and castle on fire. O'Neill 
found himself unable to cope with his enemy in 
the field ; and, as he had once before done, when 
threatened by Sir John Norreys, burned his cas- 
tle to the ground, and betook himself to the fo- 
rests and mountains which occupied the centre of 
his territory.^ 

There is a wide tract of moor and mountain, ex- 
tending from the Foyle near Strabane, in a south- 
cafeterly direction to the shores of Lough Neagh, 
where it ends in the broad-backed Slieve Gallen. 
It thus intersects the vvhwie district of ancient Tyr- 

length, reduced to thirty-five men, they found shelter it 
Leitrim castle. 

• Moryson. 

t The founder of a noble family, which has held that 
spot from that day to this ; but which afterwards (as is 
Usual with settlers in Ireland) became more Irish than 
many of the Irish tliomselves. 

X ]\Ioryv-on. 



220 LIFE Of HUGH O'NEILL. 

owen, and coversalarge areawliich is nowincluded 
in the two modern counties of Tyrone and Lon- 
donderry. To this tract, and the eastern part ot 
Arachty lying on the lower Bann, O'Neill was 
now confined : hard pressed on the Avest and 
north-west by Sir Plenry Docwra and his own 
traitor kinsman ; cut off by their chain of posts 
(which they had lately pushed southward as far 
as Omagh) from all communication with Tyr- 
connell ; enclosed on the Antrim side by Sir 
. Arthur Chichester and his powerful forces ; and 
on the south, blockaded by Mountjoy and his 
numerous garrisons, and his thrice-accursed 
Queen's Maguires and Queen's O'Reilly's — he 
yet maintained himself at Castle Roe ; corres- 
ponded with the national chiefs throughout the 
island, had his ftgents in Munster and Con- 
naught, held still aloft his noble Red Right 
Hand, and defied both the arms and the trea- 
chery of Elizabeth's crafty deputy. It is now 
that Mountjoy writes to the Lords of the Council 
in England, excusing himself for " that notwith- 
standing her Majesty's great forces, O'Neill 
doth still live," describing, and even exaggerating 
the difficulties of the country, and complaining 
that gold and treachery had not yet been so 
potent in the North as they had been found in 
Munster. The proclamations of high reward for 
O'Neill's head, it seems, had not tempted any of 
his clansmen or allies to assassinate him, as was 
expected : and Mountjoy cannot conceal his sur- 
prise. " It is most sure" says he, " that never 
traytor knew better how to keep his own head 
than this; nor any subjects have a more dreadful 



LIFE OF HUGH o'neILL. 221 

awe to lay violent hands on their sacred prince, 
than these people have to touch the person of 
their O'Neales ; — and he that hath as pestilent 
a judgement as ever any had, to nourish and to 
spreade his owne infection, hath the ancient 
swelling and desire of liberty in a conquered 
nation to work upon," &c.* 

The deputy finished his fort and bridge of 
Charlemont, and even built and garrisoned ano- 
ther on the shores of Lough Neagh, which he 
called Mountjoy ; and after he had left garrisons 
in these he sent another party to take possession 
of Augher, so that his posts now communicated 
with those of Docwra, and completely encircled 
O'Neill, both on the west and south. 

He then sent orders to Sir Henry Docwra, Sir 
Arthur Chichester, and Sir Richard Moryson, 
that they should all be in readiness within twenty 
days to penetrate O'Neill's country at once by 
different routes ; and in the mean time, upon the 
19th of July, he marched westward to Monaghan 
and Fermanagh, left some troops there under St, 
Lawrence, Esmond, and Conor Roe Mac Gwire, 
wasted and burned the country, and returned to 
co-operate in the grand combined effort against 
central Ulster. 

It was high summer; the fertile valleys of 
Tyr-owen were waving with green corn, and the 
creaghts abounded upon a thousand hills ; when the 
armies of the stranger were let loose upon that 
doomed land ; and never, since first a sword was 
drawn upon this earth, did such a storm of demo- 
niac wrath and unheard of atrocity burst upon a 

* See (his letter in the Appendix. 



*ri'£ LIFE OF HUGH 0'Ni:iLL. 

nation. Not the heathen Danes in their most 
frightful excesses ; — not the ferocious Tartar of 
Ghizni, when he swept over the plains of India 
like Azriiel the Death-angel ; — not the bastard 
Norman when he fell upon North-Humber-land 
in his wrath, and left no man or beast alive from 
Tyne to Humber — ever spread abroad ruin and 
wreck so unsparing, so systematic, as this viceroy 
of the queen of England visited upon the ancient 
territory of the Hy Nial. 

Chichester marched from Carrickfergus, and 
crossed the Bann at Toome : Docwra and his 
Derry troops advanced by way of Dungiven ; 
and Mountjoy himself by Dungannon and Kil- 
letrough :* — and wide over the pleasant fields of 
Ulster trooped their bands of ill-omened, red- 
coated reapers, assiduous in cutting that saddest 
of all recorded harvests. Morning after morning 
the sun rose bright and the birds made music, as 
they are wont to do of a summer's morning " on 
the fair hills of holy Ireland :" — and forth went 
tlie labourers by troops, with their fatal sickles 
in their hands ; and some cut down the grain, 
and trampled it into the earth, and left it rotting 
there ; and some drove away the cattle, and 
either slaughtered them in herds, leaving their 
carcases to breed pestilence and death, or drove 
them for a spoil to the southward ; and some 
burned the houses and the corn-stacks, and blot- 
ted the sun with the smoke of t'lieir conlla- 
grations ; and the summer song of birds was 
drowned by the wail of helpless cliildren and the 
shrieks of the pitiful women. All this summer 
■ Mor\'son. 



ijFF. OF Hiir.ii o'nktll. 223 

and aiit'.imn the liavoc was continued, until from 
O'Calian's country, as Mountjoy's secretary de 
scribes it, " we have none left to give us oppo- 
sition, nor of late have seen any but dead carcases 
merely starved for want of meat." 

The Deputy had taken Magherlowny and En- 
iiislaughlin, two principal forts and arsenals of 
O'Neill's, and now about the end of August ht 
penetrated to Tullogh-oge, the seat of the clan 
O'Hagan, and broke in pieces that ancient stone 
chair in which the princes of Ulster had beeu 
inaugurated for many a century.* Castle-Roe 
also soon became untenable ; and O'Neill retir- 
ing slowly, like a hunted beast keeping the dogs 
at bay, retreated to the deep woods and thicket? 
of Glan-con-keane,j; the name of that valley 
through which the Moyola winds its way to 
Lough Neagh, then the most inaccessible fastness 
in all Tyr-owen. Here, with six hundred in- 
fantry and about sixty horse, he made his last 
stand, and actually defied the armies of England 
that whole winter. His western allies were still 
up in Connaught, and Bryan Mac Art O'Neill 
in Claneboy — and a favourable reverse of fortune 
was still possible ; or the Spaniards might stiU 
remember him ; and in any event he could ill 
brook the thought of surrendering. 

But the winter's campaign in Connaught was 
fatal to the cause in that quarter. In the North 

* Stuart, the historian of Armagrh, says that somo 
fragments of the O'Neill's stone cliair used to be shewn 
upon the glebe of the parish of Desert-creight, county 
Tyrone. 

+ GLinnit'^Jn-cein, the ** far head of the glen." 



224 LIFE OF HUGH O^NEILL. 

O'Cahan gave in his submission to Docwra, and 
Chichester and Danvers reduced Bryan Mac 
Art s so that early in the spring of 1603, O'Neill 
found that no chief in all Ireland kept the field 
on his part, except O'Ruarc, Mac Gwire, and 
the faithful Tyrrell. He had heard too of Rode- 
rick O'DonnelPa submission, and Red Hugh's 
death, and that no more forces were to be hoped 
from Spain. Famine also and pestilence, caused 
by the ravage of the preceding summer, had made 
cruel havoc among his people. A thousand 
corpses lay unburied between Toome and Tul- 
logh-oge ; three thousand had died of mere star- 
vation in all Tyr-owen ; and " no spectacle," 
says Moryson, " was more frequent in the ditches 
of towns, and especially of wasted countries, than 
to see multitudes of the poor people dead, with 
their mouths all coloured green, by eating net- 
tles, docks, and all tilings they could rend up 
above ground." It was this winter that Chi- 
chester and Sir Richard Moryson, returning from 
their expedition against Bryan Mac Art, " saw 
a horrible spectacle — three children, the eldest 
not above ten years old, all eating and gnawing 
with their teeth the entrails of their dead mother, 
on whose flesh they had fed for twenty days 
past." Can the human imagination conceive 
such a ghastly sight as this ? — Or picture a win- 
ter's morning, in a field near Newry, and some 
old women making a fire there ; " and divers 
little children driving out the cattle in the cold 
mornings, and coming thither to warm them, are 
by them surprised and killed and eaten." Captain 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 225 

Trevor " and many honest gentlemen lying in the 
Nevvry" witnessed this horror — a vision more grim 
and ghastly than any weird sisters that ever 
brewed hell-broth upon a blasted heath. 

And at last the haughty chieftain learned the 
bitter lesson of adversity : the very materials of 
resistance had vanished from the face of tht 
earth, and he humbled his proud heart, and sent 
}»roposals of accommodation to Mountjoy. The 
Deputy received his instructions from London, 
and sent Sir William Godolphin and Sir Garret 
Moore as commissioners to arrange with him the 
terms of peace. The negotiation was hurried, 
on the Deputy's part, by private information 
which he had received of the Queen's death, and 
fearing that O'Neill's views might be altered by 
that circumstance, he immediately desired the 
commissioners to close the agreement and invite 
O'Neill, under safe conduct, to Drogheda, to 
have it ratified without delay. 

On the thirtieth day of March (alas ! the day) 
Hugh O'Neill, now sixty years of age — worn 
with care and toil and battle, and in bitter grief 
for the miseries of his faithful clansmen — met 
the Lord Deputy in peaceful guise at Mellifont, 
and, on his bended knees before him, tendered 
his submission ; and the favourable conditions 
that were granted him, even in this his fallen 
estate, show what anxiety the councillors of 
Elizabeth must have felt to disarm the still formi- 
dable chief. First he was to have full " pardon" 
for the past ; next to be restored in blood, not- 
withstanding his attainder and *' outlawry," and 
to be reinstated in his dignity of Earl of Tyr- 

p 



226 LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

owen ; then he and his people were to enjoy fuU 
and free exercise of their relio;ion ; and nr3AV 
" letters patent" were to issue, re-granting to 
him and other northern chiefs the whole lands 
occupied by their respective clans, save the 
tountry held by Henry Oge O'Neill and Tur- 
lough's territory of the Fews. Out of the land 
was also reserved a tract of six hundred acres 
upon the Blackwater ; half to be assigned to 
Mountjoy fort, and half to Charlemont. 

On O'Neill's part the conditions were, that he 
should once for all renounce the title of " The 
O'Neill," and the jurisdiction and state of an 
Irish chieftain ; that he should, now at length, 
sink into an Earl, wear his coronet and goldeii 
chain like a peaceable nobleman, and suffer hi^ 
country to become " shire-ground," and admit 
the functionaries of English government. He was 
also to write to Spain for his son Henry,* who 
was residing in the court of King Philip, and 
deliver him as a hostage to the King of England. 

And so the torch and the sword had rest in 
Ulster for a time ; and the remnant of its inha- 
bitants, to use the language of Sir John Davies, 
" being brayed as it were in a mortar with the 
sword, fimiine, and pestilence together, sub- 
mitted themselves to the British government, re- 

* This Henry appears to have been the only son of 
O'Neill and his first wife ; and he had been living for 
a)me years in the court of King Philip. O'Neill had 
four wives in succession — first, a daughter of one of the 
O'Tooles, then Hugh O'Donnell's sister, then Sir Henry 
Bagnal's sister ; and last, a lady of the MacGennis fa- 
mily, of Down. 



LIFE OF lIVGll o'nkILL. 227 

Odived the laws nnJ magistrates, and gladly 
embraced the King's pardon." That long bloody 
war had cost England many millions of trea- 
sure,* and the blood of tens of thousands of her 
veteran soldiers ; and from the face of Ireland it 
swept nearly one-half of the entire population. 

From that day, the distinction of " Pale" and 
" Irish Country" was at an end ; and the autho- 
rity of the Kings of England and their Irish 
parliaments, became, for the first time, para- 
mount over the whole island. The pride of 
ancient Erin — the haughty struggle of Irish 
nationhood against foreign institutions, and the 
detested spirit of English imperialism, for that 
time, sunk in blood and horror; but the Irish 
nation is an undying essence, and that noble 
struggle paused for a season, only to recommence 
in other forms and on wider ground — to be re- 
newed, and again renewed, until Ah ! 

quousque, Domincy quousque ? 

• "In the year 1399 the queen spent six hundred 
thousand pounds in six months on the service of Ireland. 
Sir Robert Cecil affirmed that in ten years Ireland cost 
her three millions four hundred thousand pounds,'*— 
Uums. These were enormous sums at that period. 



228 LIPF OF HUGH 0'NEILJ< 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE CHIEFTAIN BECOMES AN " EARL.** ARTFUI. 

CECLL. THE END. 

A. D. 1603—1616, 

It now seemed as if the entire object of that 
tremendous war had been, on the part of Eng- 
land, to force a coronet upon the unwilling brows 
of an Irish chieftain, and oblige him in his own 
despite to accept "letters patent" and broad 
lands " in fee." Surely, if this were to be the 
" conquest of Ulster," if the rich vallies of the 
North, with all their woods and waters, mills and 
fishings, were to be given up to these O'Neills 
and O'Donnells, on whose heads a price had so 
lately been set for traitors ; if, worse than all, 
their very religion was to be tolerated, and 
Ulster, with its verdant abbey-lands and livings, 
and termon-lands, were still to set "Reformation" 
at defiance; surely, in this case, the crowd of esu- 
rient undertakers, lay and clerical, had ground 
of complaint. It was not for this they left their 
homes, and felled forests, and camped on the 
mountains, and plucked down the Red Hand 
from many a castle wall. Not for this they 
" preached before the State in Christ- Church/' 



LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 229 

and censured the backsliding of the times, and 
pointed out the mortal sin of a compromise with 
Jezebel. 

Still a good time was coming for the un- 
dertakers of the sword and cassock. Their 
king was caring for them. For the present, 
indeed, while any trace of tlie national con- 
federacy remains, it is necessary to " deale 
liberally with the Irish lords of countreys,"* and 
even to tolerate their religion, " for a time not 
definite;" until the northern Irish "shall be more 
divided, and can be ruined the more easily." f 
Causes of oifence shall arise — siiall be created or 
pretended— and those lands will assuredly " es- 
cheat." Reformation will have its way, and the 
adventurers be satisfied with the bounties of 
Mieir king. 

Conciliation, however, was now the policy of 
King James. He was to rule Ireland, not with 
the iron rod of a conqueror whose title is the 
sword ; but, deducing his pedigree from all the 
British, Saxon, Danish, and Norman kings of 
England and Scotland, and condescending even 
to count kindren with the ancient Ard-righs of 
Ireland, through his ancestors the Albanian 
Scots, lie indicated an intention of governing 
the Irish with mild paternal sway, as though he 
loved them, A comprehensive act of oblivion 
and amnesty was passed and published under the 
^reat seal. All former " treasons" (as the pro- 
clamation styled a national war against usurpa- 

' See j\Lo:.tiijny's 1 ^tter, in the Appendix — a most 
iiistitict;ve document, 
t Ibid, 



230 1.IFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

tion and tyranny) were to be remitted and utterly 
extinguished ; and by the same proclamation, 
the very " Irishry" were informed that they were 
to believe themselves for the future under the 
peculiar protection of the crown ; and the king^s 
kindness, as his majesty^s attorney-general in- 
forms us, '* bred such comfort and security in 
the hearts of all men, as thereupon ensued the 
calmest and most universal peace that ever was 
seen in Ireland.'' 

Lord Mountjoy having thus finished his mis- 
sion, and, indeed, to give him justice, having 
done his errand well, repaired to Elngland, taking 
with him Hugh O'Neill and Roderick CDonnell 
to pay their liomage, like good subjects, at the 
foot of the throne. Their vessel was overtaken 
by a storm and nearly wrecked upon the Skerries, 
but at length made the port of Beaumaris, and 
the passengers proceeded on horseback to London. 
Public feeling towards any distinguished stranger 
is more accurately interpreted by the populace, 
than amidst the stately observances of king'^3 
courts, and judging by this criterion the name 
of O'Neill was more feared than loved in Eng- 
land. There were thousands of widows, tens of 
tiiousands of orphans, whose parents and whose 
husbands* bones strewed many a battle-field in 
Ulster, from Clontibret to Bealach-raoyre, ot 
whitened in heaps hard by the fatal Blackwater, 
And, as the victor of Beal-an-atha-buidhe rode 
on, " no respect to the Lord Deputy,'* says Mo- 
ryson, " in whose company he rode up to London, 
could contain many women in these parts from 
flinging dirt at him with bitter words. And 



LIFE OF HUGH 0*NEILL, 231 

R^hen he was to return, he durst not pass by 
those parts without directions to the sheriffs to 
convey him with troops of horse, from place to 
pLace, till he was safely embarked." 

But at court his reception was most gracious. 
His pardon was confirmed, his letters patent 
were duly made out, his friend Roderick O'Don- 
nell was created " Earl of Tyrconnell," first of 
that title ; and with every mark of high confi- 
dence and honour the two new noblemen were 
sent home to take possession of their estates. Td 
other chieftains, their former confederates, were 
also " granted" their own property with larger or 
smaller reservations in favour of rival claimants. 
As for Art O'Neill, Tirlough Lynnogh's son, 
(who would fain have been " The O'Neill" and 
had accepted English alliance for that end,) he 
was forced to remain " Sir Arthur," and to con- 
fine himself within narrow limits in a corner of 
the country. And the Rugged Niall Garbh, the 
Queen's O'Donnell, " had grown so insolent,'* 
says Dr. Leland, *' that government was well 
pleased to favour his competitor." He found 
that his allies were his masters, and that he must 
yield all his high pretensions in favour of the 
new Earl Roderick.* 

Then the Catholic religion was openly pro- 

• Poor Nial Garbh fought zealously for his chieftaincy, 
•'and it must be confessed," says Cox, "that he was 
instrumental in those good successes ; whereupon he 
grew so insolent as to tell the Governor Docwra to his 
face that the people of Tyrconncll were liis subjects, and 
that he would punish, exact, cut, snd hang them as h«3 
pleased." 



'1'62 LIFE OP HUGH O'NEILL. 

fessed and its rites celebrated, not only in the 
North, (where no other was yet known,) but 
even in the cities of Leinster and Munster. 
*' Popish ecclesiastics," in Dr. Leland's plirase, 
♦' practised with their votaries [that is, said mass 
and adn linistered sacraments] without any decent 
cautijn or restraint ;" even monastic buildings 
in some quarters arose from their ruins, and the 
abbeys of Multifernam in Westmeath ; Kilcon 
nell in Galway ; Rossariell in Mayo ; Quin in 
Thomond ; and Butterant, Kilcrea, and Timo- 
league in Cork ; were repaired with somewhat 
of their ancient splendour and occupied by reli- 
gious persons as of old ; to the grievous scandal 
of Dr. Ussher and all zealous Reformers. 

The Earl of Tyrone returned to Dungannon : 
and it is painful to follow this un-chieftaiiwd 
O'Neill into his " county." Sheriffs had at last 
appeared there, and made a bailiwick of it : itine- 
rant judges went circuit in it; king's commis- 
sioners travelled through it, and cleared the 
passes, and surveyed and measured out the land ; 
and with the customary policy of a government 
which is hostile to the country it assumes to rule, 
spies were planted thick around all *' suspected" 
persons. The haughty O'Neill soon found him- 
self surrounded by an atmosphere of base espion- 
nage. " Notice is taken," says Attorney-General, 
' Davies, " of every person thafis able to do either 
good or hurt. It is known not only how they 
live and what they do, hut it is foreseen what 
they purpose or intend to do: insomuch as Ty- 
rone hath been heard to complain that he had so 
niany eyes watching over hiiB— that he could not 



233 

drink a full carouse of sack, but the state was ad- 
vertised thereof a few hours after." Yet he seyms 
to have had no thought of again taking up arms. 
His wearied people had rest, and cultivated their 
lands and practised their religion in peace ; and 
the grey-haired chief, though with a gloomy brow 
and indignant heart, endured his detested earl- 
dom in silence, waiting for his best friend Death. 
But the pre-arranged system of English go- 
vernment soon began to develope itself. In the 
midst of this " most universal peace that ever was 
seen in Ireland," the king's councillors suddenly 
published in Dublin that " Act of Uniformity," 
the second of Elizabeth,* which strictly prohi- 
bited the attendance upon Catholic worship. A 
proclamation was also issued on the 4th of July, 
1605, whereby his Majesty, " declared to his be- 
loved subjects of Ireland that he would not admit 
any such liberty of conscience as they were made 
to expect ;" and commanded all Catholic clergy 
by a certain day to depart the realm.")* Again the 
spiritual courts of the king's bishops resumed 
their functions : the church- wardens were busy ; 
the priests had to fly or lurk in secret places ; 
and all the terrors of the penal laws were let loose 



* It is suflSciently well attested (though not very ma- 
terial for us to remark here) that this act was obtained 
in the Pale parliament surreptitiously and fraudulently. 
Whether it were so or not the attempting to impose it 
upon the ancient Irish, who had no part in enacting it, 
and were not even de facto subject to that parliament a* 
the time, was equally a fraud and an outrage. 

t Dr. Mant admits that there was in this proclamation 
au "apparent severity," p. 350. 



234 ^^^^ ^^ HUGH o'NEILIi. 

upon the land. Such measures as these had just 
provoked the Gunpowder Conspiracy in England ; 
and seem to have been intended to drive the Irish 
to arms, in order, as Mountjoy says, to the " ab- 
solute reducement of that country ;" but if tliat 
were the object it altogether failed ; and another 
expedient had to be substituted, as we shall pre- 
sently see. 

A very interesting account is given by Sir 
John Davies (in a letter to Robert Cecil Earl of 
Salisbury,) of a progress made by the Lord De- 
puty Sir Arthur Chichester, into some of the 
northern counties in 1607. The Lord Chancellor, 
the Chief Justice, Sir Oliver Lambert, Sir Garret 
Moore and the Attorney-General (Sir John him- 
self) accompanied Chichester ; " and albeit," he 
says, " we were to pass through the wastest and 
wildest parts of all the North, yet had we only 
for our guard six or seven score of foot, and fifty 
or three score horse, which is an argument of a 
good time and of a confident Deputy. For in former 
times, when the state enjoyed the best peace and 
security no Lord Deputy did ever venture him- 
Belf into those parts, without an army of eight 
hundred or a thousand men." They encamped 
one night on the borders of Farney, " which," 
says Sir John, " is the inheritance of the Earl 
of Essex ;" then they proceeded to Monaghan, 
delivered the gaol, and " empanelled a jury to 
inquire into the state of the church in that coun* 
ty," which found a verdict, " that the churches 
for the most part are utterly waste ; that the 
king is patron of all ; and that their incumbents 
9.TG Popish priests, instituted by bishops authorized 



LIFE OF HUGH O KEILL. 236 

from Rome." It appears, however, that the 
dioceses of Deny, Raphoe and Clogher had at 
last been provided with a king's bishop, who was 
resident in England, and " whose absence," says 
Davies, " being two years since he had been 
elected by his Majesty, hath been the chief cause 
that no course hath been hitherto taken to reduce 
these poor people to Christianity^ and therefore 
majus peccatum habet" Of another bishop, one 
Drapei', Davies says, " there is no divine service 
or sermon to be heard within either of his dio- 
ceses." 

From these intimations, it would appear that 
there was not in the year 1607 a single Protes- 
tant in all the North, except the soldiers in gar- 
rison ; so that the religious " Reformation" waj« 
still unknown there. 

The second night after leaving Monaghan they 
arrived at Lough Erne ; and " we pitched our 
tents," says Sir John, " over against the island of 
Devenish, a place being prepared for the holding 
of our sessions for Fermanagh in the ruins of an 
abbey there." Thus they proceeded through all 
Mac Gwire's, O'Reilly's and Mac Mahon's coun- 
tries, administering justice, and holding a kind of 
inquisition into both ecclesiastical and civil af- 
fairs. 

In the latter department also the Deputy found 
that much remained to be done, before English 
institutions and government should predominate 
in the North. As an instance of the tenacity 
with which the people adhered to their ancient 
customs, Davies mentions the case of an O'Reilly, 
** to whom Sir George Carey had given the cus- 



236 lAVR OF HUGH 0*NEILL. 

tody of the land (Breffni) during the king's plea- 
sure, whereof, he continues, the poor gentleman 
hath little benefit, because, not being created 
O'Relie by them, they do not suffer him to cut 
and exact like an Irish prince/' 

In concluding his narrative Davies says : " If 
my Lord Deputy do finish these beginnings, and 
settle these counties, as I assure myself he will, 
this will prove the most profitable journey for the 
service of God and his Majesty, and the genera,! 
good of this kingdom that hath been made in the 
time of peace by any deputy these many years." 

And truly it did appear full time to " settle" 
the North. All apprehension of an Irish war 
was at an end. The power of the Ulster chief- 
tains was utterly broken ; and hungry under- 
takers were waiting for their prey. English 
statesmen had now fully adopted the expedient 
of getting up fictitious plots, and fastening them 
upon whatever party they designed to ruin : and 
on this occasion we find a choice instance of that 
policy. 

Doctor Jones, the king's bishop of Meath, gives 
the generally received account of the matter in 
these words:* "Anno 1607, there was a provi- 
dential discovery of another rebellion in Ireland, 
the Lord Chichester being deputy : the discoverer 
not being willing to appear, a letter from him, 
not subscribed, was superscribed to Sir William 
Usher, clerk of the council, and dropt in the 
council-chamber then held in the Castle of Dub- 
lin ; in which was mentioned a design foi* seizing 

* Curry's Review. 



LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 237 

the Castle and murdering the Deputy, with a 
general revolt and dependence on Spanish forces 
and this also for religion : for particulars where- 
of," says the bishop, " I refer to that letter dated 
March the 19th, 1607. 

Another version of it is given thus by Ander- 
son (Royal Genealogies) : " Artful Cecil* em- 
ployed one St. Lawrence to entrap the earls of 
Tyrone and Tyrconnell, the lord of Delvin and 
other Irish chiefs, into a sham plot, which had 
no evidence but his."f 

And there is yet a third story given by Dr 
Carleton, bishop of Chichester — that one Mont- 
gomery, who is called Bishop of Derry, was in- 
formed tliat O'Neill had got into possession of 
certain lands belonging to his see (concerning 
vhich he was much more solicitous than for the 
souls of all the diocese)^ — that he instituted a 
Buit to discover these lands — that he found one 
of the O'Cahans of Derry, able and willing to 
assist his researches, and to give evidence in his 
cause — that processes were issued calling upon 
(^'Neill to appear and answer in the cause of 
*' the Lord Bishop of Derry against Hugh Earl 
of Tyrone — and that O'Neill, "having entered 
into a new conspiracy in which O'Cahan was, 
began to suspect, when he was served with a 
process to answer the suit, that this was but a 

• Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, the discoverer, and 
some say contriver, of the gunpowder plot. 

f This is the account adopted by Mac Geogher^n. 

X This must be the same absentee bishop mentioned 
by Davies, wlio had taken no course to reduce his people 
to Christianity. 



238 LIFE OF HUGH O'NF.ILT.. 

plot to draw him in, and that surely the treason 
had been revealed by O'Cahan." 

It matters little in Avhich of all these ways it 
fell out that O'Neill came to be charged with tliis 
conspiracy. By some means or other, by anony- 
mous letters, or vague rumours, "artful Cecil" 
succeeded in fixing upon O'Neill and O'Donnell 
a charge of treason, to sustain which there has 
not been, from that day to this, a tittle of evi- 
dence. They were informed however that wit- 
nesses were to be hired against them,* and be- 
lieving this highly probable from the whole course 
of English policy towards Irishmen, knowing also 
the rapacious views of James, and that their 
presence in the kingdom would only draw down 
lieavier misfortune upon their poor clansmen, and 
having moreover a wholesome terror of juries 
since the fate of Mac Mahon ; they came to the 
resolution of leaving their unhappy native coun- 
try, and seeking amongst the continental powers, 
either arms and troops to right the wrongs of 
Erin, or at least a place to end their own days in 
peace. They waited not for the toils of Chi- 
chester to close around them. ; but in the autumn 
of that year, on the festival of the Holy Cross, 
they emrjarked in a vessel that had lately carried 
Cuconnaught Mac Gwire and Donagh O'Brien 
to Ireland, and was then lying in Lough Swilly. 
With O'Neill went his wife, the lady Catlierina 
find her three sons, Hugh, whom they called the 
Baron Dungannon, John and Brian, Art Oge 
son of Cormae Mac Baron, Ferdoragh son o/ 

* AndtrsoM. Royal Genealogies. 



ijFi; OF iiur.H oNfiix. 239 

Conn (who was a natural son of O'Neill,) Hugh 
Oire and others of his family and friends. Rode- 
rick O'Donnell was attended by his brother 
Cathbar, and his sister Nuala,* Hugh, the Earl's 
child, wanting three weeks of being a year old, 
Rose, daughter of O'Dogherty and wife of Cath- 
bar, with her son Hugh, aged two years and 
three months, Roderick's brother's son Donnell 
Oge, son of Donnell, Naghtan son of Calvagh 
who was son of Donnell Cairbreach O'Donnell, 
and other friends : — surely a distinguished com- 
pany ; and " it is certain, say the reverend chro- 
niclers of Tyrconnell, that the sea has not borne, 
and the wind has not wafted in modern times a 
number of persons in one ship more eminent, 
illustrious or noble in point of genealogy, heroic 
deeds, valour, feats of arms and brave achieve- 
ments than they. \Yould that God had but per- 
mitted them," continue the Four Masters, " to 
remain in their patrimonial inheritances until 
the children should arive at the age of manhood ! 
Woe to the heart that meditated — woe to the 
mind that conceived — woe to the council that 
recommended the project of this expedition, with- 
out knowing whether they should to the end of 
their lives, be able to return to their ancient 
principalities and patrimonies." With gloomy 
looks and sad forebodings, the clansmen of Tyr- 
connell gazed upon that fatal ship, "built in th* 
eclipse and rigged with curses dark," as she 



• This lady had been the wife of Niall Garbh, but had 
left him on his taking arms against her brother, Red 

Kubg. 



240 LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 

dropped down Lough Swilly, and was hiddea 
behind the cliffs of Fanad head. They never 
saw their chieftains more. 

Here was brought about the very state of 
affairs that King James had long desired. 
" Nothing," says Dr. Leland, " could be more 
favourable to that passion which James indulged 
for reforming Ireland, by the introduction of 
English law and civility." So very favourable, 
indeed, as to leave little doubt that it was all 
contrived by that man of plots " Artful Cecil ;** 
and so vague and suspicious are the accounts of 
" the conspiracy of the Earls," that Dr. Curry 
is tolerably safe in concluding *' there never was 
any such conspiracy ; and these accounts were 
then framed, however injudiciously, to give 
some colour of right to public acts of slander, 
oppression, and rapine."* 

Instantly commissioners were despatched to 
the North to deal with " traitors," and take ac- 
count o^ lands which were to escheat to thie 
crown. The two Earls, with other chieftains, 
were duly attainted by process of outlawry ; their 
lands and titles were declared forfeit ; and the 
Plantation of Ulster commenced. 

* Historical Review. The king, as if anticipating 
this conclusion, published a proclamation, in which 
(amongst other things) he says: "wee doe professe that 
it is both known to us and our counsell here, and to our 
deputie and state there, and so shall it appeare to the 
world, (as cleare as the sunne,) by evident proofes, that 
the only ground and motive of this high contempt, in 
these men's fieparture, hath been the private knowledge 
and iuAvard terrour of their own guiltinesse," &c. But 
DO attempt to give these proofs was ever made. 



LIFE OF HUGH o'nEILL. 241 

These operations, indeed, were interrupted the 
following year by the rising of Cahir O'Dogherty, 
chief of Inishowen. O'Dogherty quarrelled with 
Sir George Pawlett, to whom Docwra had in- 
trusted the government of Derry ; and on the 
first of May, 1608, he took Culmore fort by 
stratagem, surprised Derry, put both governor 
and garrison to the sword, plundered the town 
and laid it in ashes. Three months he kept the 
field against Marshal AYingfield and his army ; 
but at length fell, either in battle, or by the 
hand of. private vengeance (for the chroniclers 
diifer), and the last obstacle was removed to one 
of the most enormous schemes of sweeping 
plunder that history has to record.* In the six 
counties of Donegal, Tyrone, Derry, Ferma- 
nagh, Cavan, and Armagh, a tract of country, 
containing five hundred thousand acres, was 
seized upon by the King, and parcelled out in 
lots to undertakers. The " domains" of the at- 
tainted lords were assumed to include all the 
lands inhabited by their clans ; and so far were 
the King's ncAV arrangements from respecting 
the rights of the ancient natives, that " the fun- 
damental ground of this plantation was the 

* The act of Parliament passed upon tliat occasion 
thus recites — "And whereas the divine justice hath 
lately cast out of the province of Ulster divers wicked 
and ungratefull tray tors, who practised to interrupt those 
blessed courses, begun and continued by your Majestie 
for the generall good of this whole reahu, by whose de- 
fection and attainders great scopes of land in those parts 
have been reduced to your Majestie's hands and posses- 
sion," &c. 



242 LIFE OF HUGH O'NEILL. 

Rvoiding of natives, and planting only with Bri- 
tish."* 

Now at last the undertakers had their will of 
Ulster, and the King's clergy had that corner oi 
the vineyard opened to their labours. Now all 
those Wingfields, and Caulfields, and Blaneys, 
and Chichesters had their long-expected estates. 
The Lord Deputy alone received for his share 
the entire peninsula of Inishowen — the broad 
erenach and termon-lands wherewith ancient 
piety had endowed Saint Columba's Tearapol- 
More, formed the richest bishop's see in Ireland 
(perhaps too rich for a bishop who had neither 
flocks nor clergy) ; and the entire territory of 
Arachty was allotted, by letters patent, with 
nruch Norman law language, to certain drapers, 
grocers, skinners, vintners, and other guilds of 
tradesmen in the good city of London ; and the 
noble old Irish race, the clansmen who had 
pierced the mailed ranks of Bagnal and Norreys, 
and had trampled Saint George's banner on 
many a battle-field, worn down by famine and 
disease, without leaders and without hope, were 
driven to the desolate mountains, were hunted 
like wolves, and from their inaccessible heights 
could see those rich valleys where they and their 
fathers dwelt, flooded by hordes of Scotch and 

* Sir Thomas PhiUps, In Harris's Hihernia. "It is 
true, says Sir Thomas, that after a prescribed number 
of freebolders and leaseholders were settled upon every 
town land, and rents tberein set down, they might let 
the remainder to natives for lives, so as they were con- 
formahle in religion, and for the favour, to double their 
rents." See also for full information on the details at 
the i)lantatiou, Captain Pynnar's " Survey of Ulster." 



LIFE OF HUGH o'neILL. 243 

English adventurers. Surely it was a heart- 
breaking sight to see ; and no man can think it 
s.range if deeds of stern and bloody vengeance 
were sometimes done. 

How it fared with the exiled chiefs and their 
associates, we have no minute or very authentic 
account ; and if we had, it were indeed one oi 
the saddest stories. At first they sailed directl}' 
to Normandy ; then proceeded to Flanders ; and 
finally to Rome, where the Pope (Paul the Fifth^ 
received them with hospitality and high consi- 
deration. But who can describe, or imagine, 
with what bitterness of soul the aged Prince of 
Ulster heard of the miseries of his faithful peo- 
ple, and the manifold oppressions and robberies 
of those detested English ; with what earnest 
passion he pleaded with Popes and Princes, and 
besought them to think upon the wrongs of Ire- 
land. Ha ! if he had sped in that mission of 
vengeance — if he had persuaded Paul or Philip 
to give him some ten thousand Italians or Spa- 
niards — how would it have fluttered those Eng- 
lish in their dove-cotes, to behold his ships stand- 
ing up Lough Foyle, with the Bloody Hand 
displayed ! Assuredly he would have disturbed 
their " letters patent," would have made very 
light of their " statutes, their fines, their double 
vouchers, their recoveries." Spanish blades and 
Irish pikes would have made "the fine of their 
fines, the recovery of their recoveries." But not 
so was it written in the Book. No potentate in 
Europe was willing to risk such a force as was 
needed ; and after wandering from court to court, 
fcaliug his own heart, ibr eight years, he be- 



244 LIFE OF HLGH O'NEILL. 

came blind, and so, with darkened eyes and soul, 
died at Rome some time in the year 1616.* 

* Borlase. Reduction of Ireland. 

Borlase says that his son (probably that Henry who 
was recalled from Spain) was, some years after, found 
strangled in his bed at Brussels; "and so," he observes, 
*' ended his race." 

From the fine Elegy so beautifully translated by Man- 
gan, it appears tbat Donnell also, and his brother 
Catlibar, and O'Neill's three young sons, all died at Rocje, 
and lie buried there together : — 

Two princes of the line of Conn 
Sleep in their cells of clay, beside 
O'Donnell Roe : 
Three royal youths, alas ! are gone. 
Who lived for Erin's weal, but died 
For Erin's woe ! 
Ah ! could the men of Ireland read 
The names these noteless burial stones 
Display to view. 
Their wounded hearts afresh would bleed 
Their tears gush forth again, their giuans 
Resound anew 1 



And who can marvel o'er thy grief, 
Or who can blame thy flowing tears, 
That knows their source ? 
O'Donnell, Dunnasava's chief. 
Cut ofl* amidst his vernal years. 
Lies here a corse, 
Beside his brother Cathbar, whom 
Tyrconnell of the Helmets mourns 

In deep despair — 
For valour, truth, and comely bloom 
For all that greatens and adorns 
A peerless pair. 



APPENDIX, 



A LETTER FROM LORD DEPUTY MOUNT JOY TO THE LORDS 
OF THE COUNCIL IN ENGLAND. 

May it please your Lordships — Although T am 
unwilling to informe you often of the present estate oi 
this kingdom, or of any particular accidents or services, 
because the one is subject to so nmch alteration, and the 
other lightly delivered unto all that are not present, 
with such uncertaintie ; and that I am loath to make 
any project unto your lordships, either of my requests 
to you, or my owne resolutions here, since so many 
things fall suddainly out, which may alter the grounds 
of either ; yet since I doe write now by one that can so 
sufficiently supply the defects of a letter, I have pre- 
siimed at this time to imparte unto your lordships that 
I think fit to be remembered, or doe determine on ; 
most humbly desiring your lordships, that if I err in the 
one, or hereafter alter the other, you will not impute it 
to my want of sinceritie or constancy, but to the nature 
of the subject wliereof I nmst treate, or of the matter 
whereon I worke : And first, to present unto your lord- 
ships the outward face of the four provinces, and after 
to guesse (as neere as I can) at their dispositions. 
Mounster, by the good government and industry of the 
Lord President, is cleare of any force in rebellion, ex- 
cept some few, not able to make any forcible head ; ir 
Leinster there is not one declared rebell ; in Connaugh^ 
there is none but in O'Rorke's country ; in Ulster none 
but Tyrone and Eryan Mac Art, who Avas never lord of 
any country, and now doth, with a body of loose me«. 



31*6 AFPF.NT^TX:. 

end some cre.igtits, continue in Glancomkynes, or neere 
the bord^jrs t'lereof. Colionoclit MiicGwyre, sometimes 
I/ord of Fernianai>'h, is banished out of the country, who 
lives witli O'-Roi'ke ; and at this time Conor Roe Mac 
Gwyre is possessed of it by the queene, and liolds it for 
her. I believe tliat generally the lords of the countries 
that are reclaimed desire a peace, though they will be 
wavering till their lands and estates are assured unto 
V\em from her Majestic ; and as long as they see a par^y 
in rebellion to subsist, that is of a power to ruine then., 
if they continue subjects or otherwise, shall be doubtful 
of our defe^K^e. All that are out doe seeke for mercy, 
excepting O'Korke, and O'Sullivan, who is now wirJi 
O'Korke, and these are obstinate only out of their diffi. 
dcnce to be safe in any foi'givenesse. The loose men, 
and such as are only captaines of Bonnoghts, as Tirrell 
and Brian Mac Art, will nourish the warre as long as 
they see any possibilitie to subsist ; and, like ill hu- 
mours, have recourse to any part that is unsound. T!ie 
iiobilitie, towns, and English-Irish are, for the most 
part, as weary of the warre as any, but unwilling to 
li?ve it ended, generally for fear that upon a peace will 
ensue a severe reformation of religion ; and, in particu- 
iar, many bordering gentlemeri that were made poore 
by their own faults, or by rebels' incursions, continue 
their spleene to them, now they are become subjects ; 
and having used to heli)e themselves by stealths, did 
never more use them, nor better prevailed in them than 
"SOW, that these submittees have layed aside their owne 
defence, and betaken themselves to the protection and 
justice of the state ; and many of them have tasted so 
much sweete in entertainments that they rather desire a 
warre to continue there than a quiet harvest that might 
arise out of their own honest labour ; so that I doe find 
none more pernicious instrmnents of a new warre than 
some of tiiese. In the meane time, Tyrone, while he 
shall live, will blow every sparke of discontent, or new 
hopes that shall l3''e hid in a corner of the kingdome 
and before he sliall be utterly extinguished make nianv 
blazes, and sometimes set on fire or (K)nsume the next 
subjects unto him. I am persuaded that his combina- 
tion ia already brolien, and it is apparent that his 



Ari'KNnix. 247 

meaiies to subsist in any power is overthrowne ; but 
liow long liee may live as a wooJ-kerne, and what non- 
accidents may fall out while he doth live I know not. 
If it be imputed to my fault that, notwithstanding her 
Majestie'f great forces, he doth still live, I beseech 
your lordships to remember how securely tlie ban- 
ditoes of Italy doe live, betweene the power of the 
King of Spaine and the Pope. How many men of 
all countreyes of severall times have in such sort pre- 
served themselves long from the great power of princes, 
but especially in this countrey, where there are so many 
difficulties to carry an armie, in most places so many un- 
accessible strengths for them to fiye unto : and then to bee 
pleased to consider the great worke that first I had to 
oreake this maine rebellion, to defend the kingdom from 
a dangerous invasion of a mightie forraine prince, with 
BO strong a partie in the countrey, and now the diffi- 
cultie to root out scattered troopes that had so many un- 
accessible dennes to lurke in, which as they are by nature 
of extreme strength and perill to bee attempted : so it is 
impossible for any people naturally and by art to make 
greater use of them. And though with infinite dangers 
M-ee do beat them out of one, yet is there no possibilitie 
for us to follow them with such agilitie as they will fl\'t 
to another : and it is most sure that never traytor knew 
better how to keepe his owne head than this ; nor any 
subjects have a more dreadfull awe to lay violent hands 
on their sacred prince, than these people have to touch 
the person of their O'Neales ; and liee that hath as pes- 
tilent a jalgment as ever any had to nourish and to 
spreade his owne infection, hath the ancient swelling and 
desire of libertie in a conquered nation to worl*e upoi^, 
their fear to bee rooted out, or to have their old faults 
punished upon all particuhir discontents, and generally 
Over all the kingdom the feare of a persecution for re- 
ligion, the debasing of the coyne, (which is grievous 
unto all sortes) and a dearth and famine wlvich is already 
begun and must necessarily grow shortly to extremity : 
the least of which alone have been many times sufficient 
motives to drive the best and most quiet estates into sud- 
daine confusion. These will keepe all spirits from set- 
tling, breed new eombinations, and, I feare, even 6tir the 



248 APPENDIX. 

townes themselves to solicit forraine aide, with promise 
to cast themselves into their protection : and although it 
bee true that if it had pleased her majestic to have longer 
continued her army in greater strength, I should the bet- 
ter have provided for what these cloudes doe threaten, 
and sooner and more easily either have made this coun- 
trey a rased table, wherein sliec might have written her 
owne lawes, or have tyed tlie ill-disposed and rebellious 
hands till I had surely planttd such a government as 
would have overgrowne and killed any weeds that should 
have risen under it : yet since the necessitie of the state 
doeth so urge a diminution of tliis great expense, I wiU 
not despayre to goe on with this worke, through all thesf 
difficulties, if wee bee not interrupted by forraine forces, 
although perchance wee may be encountered with some 
new irruptions, and (by often adventuring) with some 
disasters : and it may bee your lordships shall sometimes 
heare of some spoyles done upon the subjects, from the 
which it is impossible to preserve them in all places, with 
far greater forces than ever yet were kept in this king, 
dome : and although it hath been seldom heard that an 
armie hath been carried on with so continuall action, and 
enduring without any intermission of winter breathings, 
and that the difficulties at this time to keepe any forces 
in the place where wee must make the warre (but espe- 
cially our horse) are almost beyond any hope to prevent, 
yet with the favour of God and her majesty's fortune I 
doe determine myselfe to draw into the field as soon as I 
have received her majesty's commandments by the com- 
missioners, who it hath pleased her to send over ; and in 
the mean time I hope by mine owne presence or direc- 
tions to set every partie on worke that doth adjoyne, or 
may bee drawn against any force that doth now remaine 
in rel^ellion. In which journey the successe must bee in 
tue hands of God : but I will confidently promise to omit 
r.f thing that is possible by us to bee done, to give the 
last blow unto the rebellion. But as all paiue and an-, 
guish, impatient of the present doeth use change for a 
remedie ; so will it be impossible for us to settle the 
minds of these people unto a peace, or reduce them unto 
order, while they feele the smart of these sensible griefes 
and apparent flares which I have remembered to your 



APPENDIX. 249 

lordships without some hope of redresse or securitie. 
Therefore I will presume, (how miworthy soever I have 
beene,) since it concerns the province her majestie hath 
given me, with all humblenesse to lay before your grave 
judgments some few things whj^h I thinke necessary to 
be considered of. 

And first, whereas the alteration of tlie coyne and 
taking away of the exchange in such measure as it was 
first promised, hath bred a generall grievance unto men 
of all qualities, and so many incommodities to all sorts, 
that it is beyond the judgment of any that I can heare, 
to prevent a confusion in this estate by the continuance 
thereof, that (at the least) it would please your lord- 
ships to put this people in some certame hope, that upon 
the end of the warre this new standard shall be abolished 
or eased ; and that in the meane time the armie may be 
favourably dealt with in the exchange, since by the last 
proclamation your lordships sent over, they doe conceive 
their case will bee more hard than anie others ; for if 
they have allowed them nothing but indefinitely as much 
as they shall merely gaine out of their entertainments, 
that will proove nothing to the greater parte. For the 
onlie possibilitie to make them to live upon their enter- 
tainment, will bee to allow them exchange for the greatest 
parte thereof, since now they doe not only pay excessive 
prizes for all things, but can hardly get anything for this 
money. And, although we have presumed to alter (in 
shew though not in effect) the Proclamation in that 
point, by retayning a power in ourselves to proportion 
their allowance for exchange ; yet, was it with a minde 
to conform our proceedings therein according to your 
lordships' next directions, and therefore doe humbly de- 
sire to know your pleasures therein. For our opinions of 
the last project it pleased your lordships to send us, I 
doe humbly leave it to our generall letters : only as for 
myself I made overture to the councill in the other you 
Bent directly only to myselfe ; and because I found them 
generally to concurre, that it would prove as dangerous 
as the first, 1 did not thinke it fit any otherwise to de- 
clare your lordships' pleasure therein. And, whereas it 
pleased your lordships in your last letters to command us 
U> deale moderately in the great matter of religion ; I had. 



250 APPENDIX. 

before the receipt of 3^ ur lordships' letters, presnrned 
^n advise such as dealt in it for a time to hold a more re- 
Btraynt liand therein; and wee were botli tliiiikinu; our- 
selves what course to tal<:e in the lievacation of wliat wivs 
already done, with least incourageinent to them and 
others, since the feare that this course beg'un in Dublin 
would fall upon the rest was ajjpreliended over all the 
kinu'dom ; so that I thmk your lordships' direction was 
to greate purpose, and liie other course might liaveover- 
throwne the meanes to our owiie ende of refornuition of 
religion. Not that I thinke too greate preciseiiesse can 
bee used in the reforming of ourselves, tlie abuses of our 
owne clergie, church-livings, and disci])line ; nor that 
the trueth of the gospell can with too great vehemencie, 
or industrie, bee set forward in all jilaces, and by all or. 
(linarie means most proper unto itself, that was first set 
foorth, and spread in meekenesse ; not that I tliinkeany 
corporall prosecution or ])unishment can bee too severe 
for such as shall bee found seditious instruments of tor- 
raine or inward practices; not tliat I tluidvc it fit that 
any })rinci])all magistrates should bee chosen witliout tak- 
ing the oathe of obedience, nor tolerated in absenting 
themselves from piiblique divine service; but tliat wee 
may bee advised how wee doe punish in their bodies or 
goods any such only for religion as doe professe to bee 
faithfid subjects to her majestic, and against whom the 
contrary caimot bee proved. And since, if tlie Irish 
were utterly rooted out, there was much lesse likelihood 
that this coimtrey could bee thereby in any time i)lanted 
by the English, since tliey are so farre from inhabiting 
well an}' part of that they have already ; and that more 
than is likely to bee inhabited may bee easily chosen out 
and reserved in such places by the sea side, or upon great 
rivers, as may hee planted to great ])urpose for a futi.re 
absolute reducement of this countre}^ I thinke it would 
a.s much avail tlie speedy settling of this counti'ey as any- 
thing ; that it would please her majestic to deale liberally 
with the Irish lords of countreyes, or such as nre noiv of 
great reputation amongst them, in the distribution of 
such lands as they have formerly possessed, or the state 
here can make little use of her majestic; if they con- 
tinue as they ought to doe, and j^ieldtlie Queen as much 



APPENDIX. 25 1 

pominoditie as shee may otherwise expect, sliee hath 
made a good purchase of such subjects for such laud.— 
If any of them liereafter be disobedient to her lawes, or 
breake foorth in rebellion, shee may, wlien they shall be 
more divided, mine them more easily for example unto 
others, and (if it be tliought lit) may plant English of 
other Irish in their countryes : for although there evei 
have been, and hereafter may bee small irrnptions in 
some places, which at the first may easily be suppressed, 
yet the suflfering them to grow to that general head and 
^combination, did questionlesse proceede from great 
errour in the judgment heere, and may be easily, as I 
thinke, prevented hereafter. And further, it may please 
her Majestic to ground her resolution for the time and 
numbers of the next abatement of the list of her armie, 
somewhat upon our poor advice from hence, and to be- 
leeve that wee will not so far corrupt our judgments 
with any private respects and without necessitie, to con- 
tinue her charge, seeing wee do throughly conceive how- 
grievous it is unto her estate, and that we may not bee 
precisely tyed to an establishment that shall conclude 
the payments of the treasure since it hath ever been 
thought fit to be otherwise till the comming over of the 
Earle of Essex : and some such extraordinary occasions 
may fall out that it will be dangerous to attend your 
lordship's resolutions, and when it will bee safe to dimi- 
nish the armie here, that there may be some other 
course thouglrt of by some other employment, to dis- 
burden this countrey of the idle swordmen, in whom I 
find an inclination apt enough to bee carried elsewhere, 
eJtIier by some of this countrey of best reputation 
among them, or in companies as now they stand under 
English captains, who may be reinforced with the 
greatest part of the Irish. That it may be left to our 
discretion to make passages and bridges into coun- 
treyes otherwise inaccessable, and to build little pyles of 
stone in such garrisons as shall bee thought fittest, to 
bee continual bridles upon the people by the commoditie 
of which wee may at any time drawe the greatest parte 
of the armie together to make a head against any part 
that shall first brake out, and yet reserve the places 
unely with a word to put in greater forces as occasion 



252 APPENl^lA.. 

ehall require, which I am persuaded will prove great 
pledges upon this countrey, that upon any urgent cauise 
tlie Queen may safely drawe the greatest part of her 
arniie here out of the kingdom, to be employed for a 
time elsewhere, wherein I beseech your lordships to con- 
sider what a strength so many experienced captaines arid 
souldiers would be to any annie of new men erected in 
England against an invasion, or sent abroad in any of- 
fensive war: But untill these places be built, I cannot 
conceive how her Majestic (with any safetie) can make 
any great diminution of her armie. Lastly, I doe 
humbly desire your lordships to receive the further ex- 
planation of my meaning and confirmation of my rea- 
Bons that doe induce me unto these propositions : for the 
Lord President of Mounster, who as he hath been a very 
worthy actor in the reducement and defence of this 
kingdom, so doe I thinke him to be the best able to give 
you a through account of the present estate and future 
providence for the preservation thereof: Wherein it 
may please your lordships to require his opinion of the 
hazard this kingdom is like to runne in if it should by 
any mightie power be invaded, and how hard it will bee 
for us in any measure to provide for the present defence, 
if any such be mtended, and withall to goe on with the 
suppression of these that are left in rebellion, so that 
wee must either adventure the kindling of this fire that 
is almost extinguished, or intending onelie that, leave 
the other to exceeding peril. And thus having remem- 
bered to your lordships the most material poynts , as I 
conceive) that are fitted for the present to bee c'onis- 
dered of, I doe humbly recommend myselfe and them to 
your lordships' favour. From her Majestie's Castle of 
Dublin, the sixe and twentieth of February, 1602-3 






TEB END. 



e/' 



RD -7.4 " 









,^ 



f 



^' 



<. *'V.T* ,0 










^f K^ "'' ^.^ 








^oV 



>p^^. 




6"=^ 






LIBRANV BINOINQ .^ •^> 

3T. AUGUSTINE ^ ' ^^mpmir' . O > 






FLA. .5°-* 




.0 




illlMll 




